"And what do they do with it?"—"Very few can tell, your honour; but those who gets it are always desarving folks."
"Such as old wounded seamen, and captains of the waist especially. Well, go along to your duty. Look out! cats love milk."
So Joseph Grummet went forth from the cabin shrugging up his shoulders, with an ominous presentiment of scratches upon them. The captain, the Honourable Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban, gave the marine officer orders to place a sentry night and day over his cow, and then dismissed his guests.
The honourable commander was, for the rest of day, in a most unconscionable ill humour. The ship's sails were beautifully trimmed, the breeze was just what it ought to have been. The heavens above, and the waters below, were striving to outsmile each other. What then made the gallant captain so miserable? He was thinking only of the temerity of the man who had dared to milk his cow.
The first lieutenant touched his hat most respectfully to the Honourable Captain Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban, and acquainted him that the sun indicated it to be twelve o'clock.
"Milk my cow!" said the captain abstractedly.
"Had not that better be postponed till to-morrow morning, Captain Fitzalban?" said the lieutenant, with a very little smile; "and in the mean time may we strike the bell, and pipe to dinner?"
The captain gazed upon the gallant officer sorrowfully, and, as he shook his head, his looks said as plainly as looks could speak, and with the deepest pathos, "They never milked his cow."
"Do what is necessary," at last he uttered; then, pulling his hat more over his eyes, he continued to pace the quarter-deck.
Now, though the Honourable Captain Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban was the younger son of a nobleman, and enjoyed a very handsome patrimony, and his temper had been thoroughly spoiled by that process that is too often called education, yet his heart was sound, English, and noble. He revolted from doing an unjust action; yet he smarted dreadfully under the impression that he was cheated and laughed at to his very face. He did not think that Joseph Grummet had milked his cow, but he felt assured that the same milk-dealing Joseph knew who did; yet was he too humane to introduce the Inquisition on board his ship by extracting the truth by torture.