“Ay; let’s hear it,” said a rover.
“You all remember Ramirez?”
“Ay, ay,” was generally responded.
“You thought him—”
An outbreak from the band prevented the captain from finishing the sentence.
“Ramirez,” said the man whose face was ensconced in hair, “was the best commander that I—and I’m twelve years in the free trade—ever sailed under; ay, or ever will.”
“In action, cool as a cucumber,” rejoined a second.
“And,” added a third, “in real danger, fierce as a wild cat; and with all his wits about him, too.”
“Night nor day, I never saw him disguised in liquor,” observed another, who was so particularly drunk, that he could barely articulate. “You might trust him with uncounted gold—”
“And to his ship’s company,” added a sixth, winding up the eulogium, “he was true as needle to the north.”