“Take your hand away, White-Jacket,” he cried; “there’s no law up aloft here. I say, you Emperor—you greenhorn in the green coat, there—look you, you can’t raise a pair of whiskers yet; and see what a pair of homeward-bounders I have on my jowls! Don Pedro, eh? What’s that, after all, but plain Peter—reckoned a shabby name in my country. Damn me, White-Jacket, I wouldn’t call my dog Peter!”
“Clap a stopper on your jaw-tackle, will you?” cried Ringbolt, the sailor on the other side of him. “You’ll be getting us all into darbies for this.”
“I won’t trice up my red rag for nobody,” retorted Jonathan. “So you had better take a round turn with yours, Ringbolt, and let me alone, or I’ll fetch you such a swat over your figure-head, you’ll think a Long Wharf truck-horse kicked you with all four shoes on one hoof! You Emperor—you counter-jumping son of a gun—cock your weather eye up aloft here, and see your betters! I say, top-mates, he ain’t any Emperor at all—I’m the rightful Emperor. Yes, by the Commodore’s boots! they stole me out of my cradle here in the palace of Rio, and put that green-horn in my place. Ay, you timber-head, you, I’m Don Pedro II., and by good rights you ought to be a main-top-man here, with your fist in a tar-bucket! Look you, I say, that crown of yours ought to be on my head; or, if you don’t believe that, just heave it into the ring once, and see who’s the best man.”
“What’s this hurra’s nest here aloft?” cried Jack Chase, coming up the t’-gallant rigging from the top-sail yard. “Can’t you behave yourself, royal-yard-men, when an Emperor’s on board?”
“It’s this here Jonathan,” answered Ringbolt; “he’s been blackguarding the young nob in the green coat, there. He says Don Pedro stole his hat.”
“How?”
“Crown, he means, noble Jack,” said a top-man.
“Jonathan don’t call himself an Emperor, does he?” asked Jack.
“Yes,” cried Jonathan; “that greenhorn, standing there by the Commodore, is sailing under false colours; he’s an impostor, I say; he wears my crown.”
“Ha! ha!” laughed Jack, now seeing into the joke, and willing to humour it; “though I’m born a Briton, boys, yet, by the mast! these Don Pedros are all Perkin Warbecks. But I say, Jonathan, my lad, don’t pipe your eye now about the loss of your crown; for, look you, we all wear crowns, from our cradles to our graves, and though in double-darbies in the brig, the Commodore himself can’t unking us.”