"For the matter of that, whoever heard of a carpenter?" said the cook.
"Why Pepper, my lad, where's your schooling? Does not a carpenter's son, and one who was a carpenter himself rule the whole Christian World? But that is neither here nor there. You are too small; you would not command respect."
"Now I am surprised to hear a man of your ability, Chips, talk such utter nonsense. You seem to judge men as a butcher does his meat, by the pound. That is the sort of thing perhaps a woman might do. If that is to be your little game, you had better hoist Billy Cheeks up at once; he is not exactly a skeleton, and, no doubt, he would fill the place as well as any one else."
"No offence, Pepper, no offence, mate; it is a detail," said the carpenter.
"Then let it be a detail; and I care not who you hoist over us, so long as our head is neither expensive nor too highly gilded. But mind you, the lumber room must go."
They all agreed that this was a sensible way of looking at things, and to appease the cook, no doubt, they would there and then have lightened the ship by flinging over the whole of the Buccaneer's House of Lords, but the heavy tread of the watchman aft made them abandon the idea for the present; but as that ancient hereditary institution had fallen under the cook's displeasure, it was not likely that it could survive such a thing for long.
"What are we to do with our foreign relations?" asked the carpenter's mate.
"Ah! Chisel, my lad, you are coming to the front," said the carpenter.
"What have we to do with foreign relations?" the cook asked. "Let them mind their own business, and we will mind ours."
"The unfortunate thing is," said the butcher, "that they won't mind their own business; no people will." The butcher gave another start and declared he heard the mysterious sound at the back of the galley.