“What handy and hearty fellows sailors are, uncle; we have just seen one, and he gave us such a hearty cheer!”
“It has been said, that a British sailor can only give free vent to his feelings by a hearty cheer. It is his mode of thanksgiving for a benefit received; with a cheer he honours his friend, defies his enemy, and proclaims a victory. Sailors may be hearty, but how do you make them out to be handy? In many things they are the clumsiest fellows in the world.”
“Do you say so! What are they clumsy in doing?”
“Oh! in things without number. In the first place, they are bad hands at passing by a messmate in distress without relieving him; then they know nothing about running away from danger; you cannot teach them, any how, to forget an old friend; and they are the awkwardest fellows in the world in striking their colours when alongside an enemy.”
“You are right! you are right, uncle. About half an hour ago a sailor came up to us, and said that ‘Poor Jack’ was ‘in shallow water,’ and that, having nothing in his ‘bread-room,’ he would let us have a real India silk handkerchief for little or nothing.”
“And did you buy his handkerchief of him?”
“No, uncle. But we were so pleased with what he told us of his cruises, and battles, and shipwrecks, that we gave him all the money we had.”
“Ay, well, that would answer his purpose quite as well. It is possible that you may have fallen in with a ‘true blue,’ but I am very doubtful. It was but last week that a fellow accosted me with the old story about a ‘King’s ship.’ ‘The winds blowing great guns in the Bay of Biscay, O!’ ‘breakers ahead!’ a ‘lee shore and a wreck!’ but he had stumbled on a Tartar; for a few questions about sea affairs made him look all manner of ways at once, and it was a clear case that he would have willingly given up a part of his ill-gotten prize-money to have secured a retreat. At first I used him tenderly, treating him with only a few points of the compass backwards—north-by-west, north-north-west, north-west-by-north, north-west, north-west-by-west, and west-north-west. This was, as I well knew, all Dutch to him. Seeing him look rather queerish, I opened upon him with my ‘tiller-ropes,’ ‘gun-tackle,’ ‘mizzen-jears,’ ‘jib-halyard,’ ‘fore-braces,’ ‘deep-sea-line-blocks,’ ‘top-sail-sheet-bits,’ ‘main-top bow-lines,’ and ‘ringtail-booms,’ until he looked as frightened as if I had been a wild man of the woods. At last, seeing that he was preparing to scud before the wind, I poured in a broadside of ‘Brail up and haul down the main-top-mast stay-sail!’ ‘Bear a hand, my hearty!’ ‘Man well the lee-brail, and down haul!’ ‘Gather in the slack o’ the weather brail!’ ‘Let go the halyards!’ ‘Ease off the sheet!’ ‘Haul down, and brail up briskly!’ ‘There! let go the tack, and stop the sail to the lee-fore-rigging!’ ‘What! are you off? then up all hammocks!’ ‘Prepare for action!’ ‘Fire to the larboard!’ And away ran the rogue, forgetting how he had been wounded by a nine-pounder, as nimbly as though a press-gang had been at his heels.”
“It served him right, uncle! that it did.”
“A true-hearted sailor would rather take in a reef of the main-top-sail in a hurricane than skulk about in such a manner under false colours.