The navigator also told our commanding officer, in the usual stereotyped nautical formula, that it was twelve o’clock.
“All right,” replied the commodore. “Make it so!”
Accordingly, the sentry on the forecastle struck Eight Bells, and the men were piped down to dinner; the boatswain’s mates sounding their shrill calls through the ship as the echo of the last stroke of the clapper on the side of the ship’s bell ceased to reverberate in the noisy air, which was filled with the creaking of the blocks aloft and the hum of the wind, the sea breaking against our counter alongside in a sullen fashion as if old Neptune were disappointed at letting us slip out of his clutches!
At One Bell, half-an-hour later, when the grog was served out to the men—we boys, of course, having none of this, nor wanting it either—a rather amusing incident occurred.
Some of the chaps on board, though passed for ordinary seamen, were ‘green hands’; and the older sailors that leavened the company, used to crack jokes on these and ‘pull their legs’ pretty considerably, until the green ones got too knowing to be taken in.
One fellow we had with us in the starboard watch, however, seemed to be so naturally ‘raw’ that nothing served to ‘salt’ him; and he was the butt not only of his own mess, but of the whole ship’s company.
On this occasion Harris, a leading seaman, took a fine rise out of him.
“Say, Joblins,” he called out, as he was going to light his pipe to have a smoke forwards, we boys having set out the spittoons for the men along the ‘’tween decks,’ “got your grog all right, old ship?”
“Oh ay,” answered the other. “I’se droonk un.”
“But I means yer second ’lowance.”