"Ah!" said one veteran, "I heard old Blake myself say, soon after his Highness was made the same as a king, and many lubberly scoundrels put up their backs at it—'Boys,' says he, and, my eyes! how nobly he does stand upon the deck o' his own ship, the Triumph!—'Boys,' says he, 'it isn't for us to mind state affairs, but keep foreigners from fooling us.' D—n it, that's what I call English."
"So it is," continued another, whose weather-beaten body was supported on a pair of wooden legs, and who had just joined the little party of which Robin made one; "so it is, Jack, and what I call English, worth ten books full of other lingo; wasn't I with him in Fifty-three, when, with only twelve vessels, he beat Van Tromp, who had seventy ships of the line and three hundred merchantmen under convoy? and hadn't the Triumph seven hundred shot in her hull? Well, though it was there I lost my precious limbs, I don't grudge them, not I: it's as well to go to the fish as to the worms, and any how we have the king's pension."
"Jemmy," said a waggish-looking sailor, with only one eye and half an arm, twirling some tobacco in his mouth at the same time—"Jemmy, it's rum talking about royalty—you forget——"
"It's no such thing as rum talking, Terry; I don't mind who governs England—she's England still. It warms my blood, too, to think of the respect paid the Union Jack by all nations. When our admiral, God bless him! was in the road of Cadiz, a Dutch fellow didn't dare to hoist his flag; so, ye see, the Dutch knows what's what, though both men and ships are heavy sailors."
"Yes," chimed in the first speaker, "that was the time when his health was drunk with a salute of five guns by one of the French commanders: and it's noble, so it is, to see the order he keeps those Algerines in. Why, if in searching the Sallee rovers they found an English prisoner aboard, they sent him off to Blake as civil as possible, hoping to get favour. But that didn't hinder him from peppering both the Dey of Algiers, and the infidel rascal at Tunis."
"I hear that the burning of the Spanish ships in the Road of Santa Cruz was the most wonderful thing ever done," observed he of the wooden legs; "and it's desperate bad news that he's taken on for sickness; for sure am I, that the Protector will never have so faithful a friend, or so good a servant. And so I told the sergeant, or whatever you choose to call him, of the Ironsides, who stopped at the Oliver's Head, down below yesterday, to bait horses, or some such thing:—says I, 'If Blake goes, let your master look to himself.'—But I hate all soldiers—lubberly, sulky, black-looking fellows—no spirit in them, particularly now, when it's the fashion not to drink, or swear, or do any thing for divarsion—ugh!" And the old man's ire against the "land-lubbers" grew so hot, that he turned away, and stumped stoutly down the hill. Robin was not tardy in following, nor long in getting into conversation, though the remembrance of the "land lubbers" still rankled in the old man's mind.
"Here's a most excellent glass," said Robin, pulling a pocket-glass from his vest, and showing it to the sailor; "you can count the very shot-holes in the vessel they are towing up."
The sailor took it with a sneer of incredulity and a glance of distrust at the speaker, but neither were of long duration.
"Yes," said he, after gazing through it attentively for some minutes; "yes, that is something like what I call a glass. 'Gad, it makes me young again to see those marks—every bullet had its billet, I warrant me. The eye you have left, my friend, does not look, though, as if it wanted such a helper."
"Nor does it," said Robin; "and, as a token of the great honour which I bear to the wooden walls of Old England, you are welcome to keep it."