"Well, then, Soundings, what do you think of the third ship in the French line?" continued Bury, disregarding the levity of the youth: "did you ever see such top-masts, as she carries, before?"
"I scarce ever saw a Frenchman without them, Mr. Bury. You'd have just such sticks in this fleet, if Sir Jarvy would stand them."
"Ay, but Sir Jarvy won't stand them. The captain who sent such a stick up in his ship, would have to throw it overboard before night. I never saw such a pole in the air in my life!"
"What's the matter with the mast, Mr. Bury?" put in Magrath, who kept up what he called constant scientific skirmishes with the elder sea-officers; the junior being too inexperienced in his view to be worthy of a contest. "I'll engage the spar is moulded and fashioned agreeably to the most approved pheelosphical principles; for in that the French certainly excel us."
"Who ever heard of moulding a spar?" interrupted Soundings, laughing loudly, "we mould a ship's frame, Doctor, but we lengthen and shorten, and scrape and fid her masts."
"I'm answered as usual, gentlemen, and voted down, I suppose by acclamation, as they call it in other learned bodies. I would advise no creature that has a reason to go to sea; an instinct being all that is needed to make a Lord High Admiral of twenty tails."
"I should like Sir Jarvy to hear that, my man of books," cried the fourth, who had satisfied himself that a book was not his own forte—"I fancy your instinct, doctor, will prevent you from whispering this in the vice-admiral's ear!"
Although Magrath had a profound respect for the commander-in-chief, he was averse to giving in, in a gun-room discussion. His answer, therefore, partook of the feeling of the moment.
"Sir Gervaise," (he pronounced this word Jairvis,) "Sir Gervaise Oakes, honourable sir," he said, with a sneer, "may be a good seaman, but he's no linguist. Now, there he was, ashore among the dead and dying, just as ignorant of the meaning of filius nullius, which is boy's Latin, as if he had never seen a horn-book! Nevertheless, gentlemen, it is science, and not even the classics, that makes the man; as for a creature's getting the sciences by instinct, I shall contend it is against the possibilities, whereas the attainment of what you call seamanship, is among even the lesser probabilities."
"This is the most marine-ish talk I ever heard from your mouth, doctor," interrupted Soundings. "How the devil can a man tell how to ware ship by instinct, as you call it, if one may ask the question?"