“I don’t say it is writing,” growled the old man. “I say it looks like it.”
“I can assure you you’re mistook, sir,” said the cook, blandly; “you see, I clean the sorsepans the same way. I only ’eard of it lately. Look ’ere.”
He placed the articles in question upside down in a row on the deck, and Tim, reading the legends inscribed thereon, and glancing from them to the mate, was hastily led below in an overwrought condition by the flattered Mr. Green.
“Cook,” said the mate, ferociously.
“Sir,” said the other.
“I won’t ’ave the sorsepans cleaned that way.
“No, sir,” said the cook, respectfully, “it does make ’em larf, don’t it, sir, though I can’t see wot they’re larfing at any more than wot you can.”
The mate walked off fuming, and to his other duties added that of inspector of pots and pans, a condition of things highly offensive to the cook, inasmuch as certain culinary arrangements of his, only remotely connected with cleanliness, came in for much unskilled comment.
The overworked crew went ashore at the earliest possible moment after their arrival in London, in search of recuperative draughts. Ben watched them a trifle wistfully as they moved off, and when Nibletts soon after followed their example without inviting him to join him in a social glass of superior quality, smiled mournfully as he thought of the disadvantages of rank.
He sat for some time smoking in silence, monarch of all he surveyed, and then, gazing abstractedly at the silent craft around him, fell into a pleasant dream, in which he saw himself in his rightful position as master of the Foam, and Nibletts, cashiered for drunkenness, coming to him for employment before the mast. His meditations were disturbed by a small piece of coal breaking on the deck, at which he looked lazily, until, finding it followed by two other pieces, he reluctantly came to the conclusion that they were intended for him. A fourth piece, better aimed, put the matter beyond all reasonable doubt, and, looking up sharply, he caught the watchman in the act of launching the fifth.