"No, Bill, I loves to see a good sunset," rejoined the other; "and I never see'd finer then what I've see'd in these here seas. It's some'at strange to my thinking, though, messmate, that God A'mighty should have made this part o' the world so beautiful, and yet have put such d—— lousy, beggarly rascals to live in it! Look at them there Italians, with no more pluck about 'em than this here cat-head!"
"Nay, shipmates," said the serjeant of marines, who had just joined them, "you do yourselves injustice. I hope there is some pluck about the cat-head, though there may be none in it. But you say right—perfectly right, as it regards those lazy-roany; they are a d—— set, to be sure! But, their women, Jem—their women! Oh! they're dear, delicious, lovely creaturs!"
"Mayhap they may be to your thinking," responded the captain of the forecastle rather contemptuously: "but give me a good, hearty, right-arnest, full-plump, flesh-and-blood Englishwoman; and none o' your skinny, half-starved, sliding-gunter-legged, spindle-shank sinoreas for me!"
"You manifest a shocking want of taste, shipmate," returned the serjeant, proudly, and bringing himself to a perpendicular. "The Italian women are considered the most lovely in women the world."
"Tell that to the marines, ould chap!" chimed in a boatswain's mate, who now made a fourth in the party. "The most lovely women in the world, eh? Why, Lord love your foolish heart! I wouldn't give my Mrs. Sheavehole for all that Italy could stow, take it from stem to starn."
"She's your wife, Jack, and the mother of your children," argued the serjeant; "but that cannot make her a bit the more of a beauty."
"Can't it, though!" exclaimed the boatswain's mate, sharply, and at the same time giving the mountain of tobacco in his cheek a thorough twist. "If it don't, then I'm d——! and, setting a case, it's just this here: when we first came within hail of each other, she was as handsome a craft as ever had God A'mighty for a builder; every timber in her hull was fashioned in Natur's own mould-loft, and she was so pinned and bolted together that each plank did its own proper duty."
"But she's declining in years, you know, Jack," urged the serjeant, provokingly; "and though she might have been once handsome, yet age is a sad defacer of beauty."
"And suppose it is a facer of beauty, it can't change the fashion of the heart!" uttered the boatswain's mate. "But, that's just like you jollies!—all for paint and pipe-clay. Now, Suke's as handsome to me as ever she was; and when I sees her like an ould hen clucking over the young uns, I'm blessed if I don't love her more than when she saved me from having my back scratched by the tails o' the cat! I know, when a craft is obliged to be unrigged and laid up in ordinary, she don't look not by no manner o' means so well as when she was all a-taunto, and painted as fine as a fiddle: but still, shipmates, she's the same craft; and as for beauty, why, setting a case, it's just this here: there's ould beauty, as well as young beauty; and it a'nt so much in the figure-head, or the plank-shear, as having done your duty once, and ready to do it again."
"All that may be very true, Jack," persevered the serjeant; "but then, you must allow there is as great a difference in the appearance of some women when compared to others, as there is in the build or rig of a vessel."