“Ah, my lad,” said one of them, “you’re quite right to come down—for you’ve climbed too high. Our worthy Captain’s child won’t have nothing to say to a poor chap like you.”
All the sailors said “Hear, hear,” and nodded their heads simultaneously, like so many china mandarins in a tea-shop.
“No, no,” said Dick Deadeye, “Captains’ daughters don’t marry common sailors.”
Now this was a very sensible remark, but coming from ugly Dick Deadeye it was considered to be in the worst possible taste. All the sailors muttered, “Shame, shame!”
“Dick Deadeye,” said Bobstay, “those sentiments of yours are a disgrace to our common nature.”
Dick shrugged his left eyebrow. He would have shrugged his shoulders if he could, but they wouldn’t work that way; so, always anxious to please, he did the best he could with his left eyebrow, but even that didn’t succeed in conciliating his messmates.
“It’s very strange,” said Ralph, “that the daughter of a man who hails from the quarter-deck may not love another who lays out on the fore-yard arm. For a man is but a man, whether he hoists his flag at the main-truck, or his slacks on the main deck.”
This speech of Ralph’s calls for a little explanation, for he expressed himself in terms which an ordinary landsman would not understand. The quarter-deck is the part of the ship reserved for officers, and the fore-yard arm is a horizontal spar with a sail attached to it, and which crosses the front mast of a ship, and sailors are said to “lay out” on it when they get on to it for the purpose of increasing or reducing sail. Then again, the main-truck is the very highest point of the middle mast, and it is from that point that the Captain flies his flag, while a sailor is said to “hoist his slacks” when he hitches up the waist-band of his trousers to keep them in their proper place. Now you know all about that.
“Ah,” said Dick Deadeye, “it’s a queer world!”
“Dick Deadeye,” said Mr. Bobstay, “I have no desire to press hardly on any human being, but such a wicked sentiment is enough to make an honest sailor shudder.”