Then lived upon swipes and salt junk.
Billy the cook got drunk,
Fell into a sty,
And knocked out his eye,
Then into the sick bay he slunk.
As [Billy] had the meanest opinion of any one that would lay by for sickness, the last line of the above threw him into such a rage that Perkins, not finding his situation tenable, was obliged to make a hasty retreat; but not before
he got a switch
As quick as lightning on the breech,
which hastened his way down the cockpit ladder. [Billy] was once sitting in the gunroom cleaning a pair of huge yellow buckles, when the same Perkins chalked on a board in large letters, ‘To be seen alive—The old blind sea monster, cleaning buckles as large as the main hatchway.’ The moment he got sight of the inscription, [Billy] caught hold of a cutlass from the stand and cleared the gunroom in an instant, and had very near given it to Perkins, whom he suspected. He had a custom, when half seas over, of sounding a horn like a huntsman and calling the hounds, and used to swear he would be in at the death.
When he went to pass for lieutenant, one of the midshipmen and Marr the boatswain went up to London with him. They found it no easy matter to keep him in order, and he once swore to have them taken up as runaway soldiers. When he went to the navy board to undergo his examination he asked the commissioners the meaning of the word ‘azimuth’ and told them he could never find any wa wa that knew a word about it. Some of the board had been shipmates with him and were well acquainted with his ways; and when putting him right when answering a question, he would say, ‘Go on, go on, my boy, that’s the way; you are very right,’ as if he was passing them; and when they told him they had no more questions to ask, he said he was glad of it and would go back to his ship like a lark.