“Flour; eight hundred barrels of flour.”
“Flour! Would you not do better to carry that to Liverpool? The Mississippi must be almost turned into paste by the quantity of flour it floats to market.”
“Notwithstanding that, lieutenant, I know Uncle Sam’s economy so well, as to believe I shall part with every barrel of my flour to his contractors, at a handsome profit.”
“You read whig newspapers principally, I rather think, Mr. Spike,” answered Wallace, in his cool, deliberate way, smiling, however, as he spoke.
We may just as well say here, that nature intended this gentleman for a second lieutenant, the very place he filled. He was a capital second lieutenant, while he would not have earned his rations as first. So well was he assured of this peculiarity in his moral composition, that he did not wish to be the first lieutenant of any thing in which he sailed. A respectable seaman, a well-read and intelligent man, a capital deck officer, or watch officer, he was too indolent to desire to be any thing more, and was as happy as the day was long, in the easy berth he filled. The first lieutenant had been his messmate as a midshipman, and ranked him but two on the list, in his present commission; but he did not envy him in the least. On the contrary, one of his greatest pleasures was to get “Working Willy,” as he called his senior, over a glass of wine, or a tumbler of “hot stuff,” and make him recount the labors of the day. On such occasions, Wallace never failed to compare the situation of “Working Willy” with his own gentlemanlike ease and independence. As second lieutenant, his rank raised him above most of the unpleasant duty of the ship, while it did not raise him high enough to plunge him into the never-ending labors of his senior. He delighted to call himself the “ship’s gentleman,” a sobriquet he well deserved, on more accounts than one.
“You read Whig newspapers principally, I rather think, Mr. Spike,” answered the lieutenant, as has been just mentioned, “while we on board the Poughkeepsie indulge in looking over the columns of the Union, as well as over those of the Intelligencer, when by good luck we can lay our hands on a stray number.”
“That ship, then, is called the Poughkeepsie, is she, sir?” inquired Spike.
“Such is her name, thanks to a most benificent and sage provision of Congress, which has extended its parental care over the navy so far as to imagine that a man chosen by the people to exercise so many of the functions of a sovereign, is not fit to name a ship. All our two and three deckers are to be called after states; the frigates after rivers; and the sloops after towns. Thus it is that our craft has the honor to be called the United States ship the ”Poughkeepsie,“ instead of the “Arrow,” or the “Wasp,” or the “Curlew,” or the “Petrel,” as might otherwise have been the case. But the wisdom of Congress is manifest, for the plan teaches us sailors geography.”
“Yes, sir, yes, one can pick up a bit of l’arnin’ in that way cheap. The Poughkeepsie, Capt.—?”
“The United States’ ship Poughkeepsie, 20, Capt. Adam Mull, at your service. But, Mr. Spike, you will allow me to look at your papers. It is a duty I like, for it can be performed quietly, and without any fuss.”