Now, the peculiar circumstances of my bringing-up had given me a ridiculous haughtiness,—for Betty Green had never ceased to implore me to remember my quality,—so I replied to this offhand speech in kind.
“A ship of the line,” said I. “Damme, do you think I’d serve in a gun-brig?”
He came up a little closer to me, looked at me attentively, and said,—
“It’s an infant Rodney, sure. Was not Americus Vespucius your grandfather? And was not your grandmother in love with Noah when he was oakum boy at the Portsmouth docks?”
I considered this very offensive and, drawing myself up, said,—
“My grandfather was a baronet, and my grand-uncle is Admiral Sir Peter Hawkshaw, whose flagship, as you may know, is the Ajax, seventy-four.”
“I know him well,” responded my new acquaintance. “We were drunk together this night week. He bears for arms Lot’s wife after she was turned into a pillar of salt, with the device, ‘I thirst’.”
This was an allusion to the drysalter. For I soon found that the young gentlemen in the cockpit were intimately acquainted with all of the antecedents, glorious or otherwise, of their superior officers.
The lie in the early part of this sentence was patent to me, but so great was the power to charm of this squinting, wide-mouthed fellow, that I felt myself drawn to him irresistibly, and something in my countenance showed it, for he linked his arm through mine and began again,—
“I know your great-aunt, too, Polly Hawkshaw. Dreadful old girl. I hear she can tack ship as well as the admiral; knows to a shilling what his mess bill is, and teaches him trigonometry when he is on leave.”