"Very well, Sir Gervaise; the spar shall be righted in the morning watch," quietly returned the captain.
"Now, there's Goodfellow, half-parson as he is; the man contrives to keep his sticks more upright than any captain in the fleet. You never see a spar half an inch out of its place, on board the Warspite."
"That is because her captain trims every thing by his own life, sir," rejoined Greenly, smiling. "Were we half as good as he is, in other matters, we might be better than we are in seamanship."
"I do not think religion hurts a sailor, Greenly—no, not in the least. That is to say, when he don't wedge his masts too tight, but leaves play enough for all weathers. There is no cant in Goodfellow."
"Not the least of it, sir, and that it is which makes him so great a favourite. The chaplain of the Warspite is of some use; but one might as well have a bowsprit rigged out of a cabin-window, as have our chap."
"Why, we never bury a man, Greenly, without putting him into the water as a Christian should be," returned Sir Gervaise, with the simplicity of a true believer of the decency school. "I hate to see a seaman tossed in the ocean like a bag of old clothes."
"We get along with that part of the duty pretty well; but before a man is dead, the parson is of opinion that he belongs altogether to the doctor."
"I'd bet a hundred guineas, Magrath has had some influence over him, in this matter—give the Blenheim a wider berth, Sir Wycherly, I wish to see how she looks aloft—he's a d——d fellow, that Magrath,"—no one swore in Sir Gervaise's boat but himself, when the vice-admiral's flag was flying in her bows;—"and he's just the sort of man to put such a notion into the chaplain's head."
"Why, there, I believe you're more than half right, Sir Gervaise; I overheard a conversation between them one dark night, when they were propping the mizzen-mast under the break of the poop, and the surgeon did maintain a theory very like that you mention, sir."
"Ah!—he did, did he? It's just like the Scotch rogue, who wanted to persuade me that your poor uncle, Sir Wycherly, ought not to have been blooded, in as clear a case of apoplexy as ever was met with."