For several days previous to the advent of the holiday, frequent conferences were held on the gun-deck touching the melancholy prospects before the ship.
“Too bad—too bad!” cried a top-man, “Think of it, shipmates—a Fourth of July without grog!”
“I’ll hoist the Commodore’s pennant at half-mast that day,” sighed the signal-quarter-master.
“And I’ll turn my best uniform jacket wrong side out, to keep company with the pennant, old Ensign,” sympathetically responded an after-guard’s-man.
“Ay, do!” cried a forecastle-man. “I could almost pipe my eye to think on’t.”
“No grog on de day dat tried men’s souls!” blubbered Sunshine, the galley-cook.
“Who would be a Jankee now?” roared a Hollander of the fore-top, more Dutch than sour-crout.
“Is this the riglar fruits of liberty?” touchingly inquired an Irish waister of an old Spanish sheet-anchor-man.
You will generally observe that, of all Americans, your foreign-born citizens are the most patriotic—especially toward the Fourth of July.
But how could Captain Claret, the father of his crew, behold the grief of his ocean children with indifference? He could not. Three days before the anniversary—it still continuing very pleasant weather for these latitudes—it was publicly announced that free permission was given to the sailors to get up any sort of theatricals they desired, wherewith to honour the Fourth.