“Can’t you give us a toast, O’Shaughnessy?” sung out Westbrook.
“Shure and what shall it be?” said he, with humorous simplicity. A general roar of laughter followed.
“Any thing, my hearty,” said Westbrook, cramming a piece of junk into his mouth as he spoke.
“Arrah thin, and ye’ll not refuse to dhrink the memory of our gallant comrade,” said he, looking hard at me, “present this blessed minit, who fought, bled, and died at Fort Moultrie—Misther Parker, I mane, boys.”
The explosions of laughter which followed this speech, like successive peals of thunder, were enough to lift the deck of the schooner off bodily from overhead. But the most laughable part of all was the amazement of poor O’Shaughnessy, who, unable to understand this new burst of merriment, looked from one to another, in humorous perplexity. As soon, however, as the company could compose itself, the toast was drunk amid a whirlwind of huzzas. I rose to return thanks.
“Hear him—hear him,” roared a dozen voices. I began.
“Honored as I am, gentlemen, by this token of—of,” but here I was interrupted by the entrance of the purser, who, poking his head through the narrow doorway, said,
“Gentlemen, the captain must be informed of this riot if it continues.”
The purser was a stiff, starch, precise old scoundrel, with a squint in his eye, a nasal twang, and an itching after money beyond even that of Shylock. To make a dollar he would descend to the meanest shifts. But this would not have irritated the mess so much, even though he had at one time or another fleeced every member of it, had it not been his constant practice to inform on such of the tricks inseparable to a set of youngsters as came under his notice. He was, in short, a skulking spy. Added to this he was continually affecting a strictness of morals which was more than suspected to be hypocritical.
“And who made you keeper of the skipper’s conscience?—eh! old plunderer,” said Westbrook, as he shied a biscuit at the purser’s head.