“Lower away!”
In a few minutes we were leaping over the calm sea in the direction of the strange ship, for the breeze had died down, and we were too eager to meet with new faces, and to hear the sound of new voices, to wait for the wind.
To our joy we found that the Yankee had had a gam (as I have already said) with an English ship a few days before, so we returned to our vessel loaded with old newspapers from England, having invited the captain and crew of the Yankee to come aboard of us and spend the day.
While preparation was being made for the reception of our friends, we got hold of two of the old newspapers, and Tom Lokins seized one, while Bill Blunt got the other, and both men sat down on the windlass to retail the news to a crowd of eager men who tried hard to listen to both at once, and so could make nothing out of either.
“Hold hard, Tom Lokins,” cried one. “What’s that you say about the Emperor, Bill?”
“The Emperor of Roosia,” said Bill Blunt, reading slowly, and with difficulty, “is—stop a bit, messmates, wot can this word be?—the Emperor of Roosia is—”
“Blowed up with gunpowder, and shattered to a thousand pieces,” said Tom Lokins, raising his voice with excitement, as he read from his paper an account of the blowing up of a mountain fortress in India.
“Oh! come, I say, one at a time, if you please,” cried a harpooner; “a feller can’t git a word of sense out of sich a jumble.”
“Come, messmates,” cried two or three voices, as Tom stopped suddenly, and looked hard at the paper, “go ahead! wot have ye got there that makes ye look as wise as an owl? Has war been and broke out with the French?”
“I do believe he’s readin’ the births, marriages, and deaths,” said one of the men, peeping over Tom’s shoulder.