Ships (to speak thus of their companies) talk of the same subjects over a million miles of changing seas: they have a permanent stock of subjects. These include all which are perennially of interest to seafaring men, such as homes versus boarding-houses, but they include also something more individual, something more intimately connected with the essence of that particular vessel. And the one unending topic of interest on board the Potluck was foreign politics.
How this came about no one knew, though many theories were set afloat and sunk again every Sunday afternoon. Some said that the first captain of the Potluck was called Palmerstone, and that he introduced the subject of England versus the world as soon as he came on board. Others swore that they had been told by a clerk in the employ of the firm that there had been a discussion over her very keel concerning the introduction into her frame of foreign oaks.
"This was the way of it," said Jack Hart, who was the chief upholder of this particular theory, and the son of a little shipbuilder—"the lot that built her at Liverpool was the mixedest crowd of forsaken cranks as ever handled timber. So the clerk said. And one had a hankerin' for teak and another for hoak (with odd leanin's now and agin for Hafrican and Portugee and French hoak), and another he said 'Cuban Sabicu,' and another's word was 'Hackmatack' and 'chestnut' hevery time. So they shoved in bits here and bits there till she was a reg'lar junk-shop o' samples. And that's the reason she's a foreign talking argument ship. And a mighty good reason too."
The crowd listened in silence.
"If you knew as much about arguin' as you know (seemin'ly) about timbers as no man ever heerd of, your argument might stand," said Mackenzie, a withered old foc'sle man. "But it ain't to reason as the natur' of the woods in a ship should make us talk this way or that. If so be a ship was built o' teak, d'ye think we'd talk the 'jildy jow,' you black 'son of a gun' lingo?"
Hart shook his head.
"No ship ain't never built all of teak as I ever heerd of, and so your eye's out, Mac. But a man with 'arf an eye could see the knowledge of her bein' so built might lead right hup to talk about the stren'ths of the countries as well of the vally of their timbers."
"So they might," said the almost convinced crowd. "Now Jack Hart 'as the gift, so to speak, of seein' through things."
"And once started, who'd stop it?" asked Jack triumphantly. "I knowed a ship as 'ad fresh crowd after fresh crowd in her, but she for ever 'ad a black cat aboard. And they talked 'cat' to make you sick. And I knowed another as 'ad from launch to her hultimate pilin' up in the Bermudas the fashion of calling the skipper the 'Guffin.' And hevery skipper was the 'Guffin,' new and old, go or stay. But when we broke hoff to hargue, why, we was talkin' about them French jossers and whether Sallis-bury was a-goin' to let 'em chip into our game and straddle the Nile."
"That's so," said the crowd, and the House was rough.