“It ain’t hardly fittin’ to sing,” answered Bill deprecatingly. “It begins sumpin’ about you: ‘“A sail! all hands!” the boatswain cries.’”
“Seems to me,” said the boatswain, with a wink to the men, “I heard that ’ere song, or one monstrous like it, while we was at L’Orient, and somebody said as it were composed by a officer—”
“You ain’t heard no sich a thing,” tartly answered Bill. “I thought it out in the dog-watch last night, and I wrote it out at nigh eight bells this mornin’. I ain’t got no need to sing other folks’s songs. I got the savey to make ’em up and sing ’em too.”
“Then shake out your reefs and go ahead,” said the boatswain; and after the regulation amount of urging from his mates Bill began:
“‘A sail! all hands!’ the boatswain pipes,
And instant at the signal sound,
Beneath the waving Stars and Stripes,
Each sailor at his post is found.
“Due south, close hauled, in trim array,
A gallant frigate’s on our lee;