"Avast, there! Belay that piping! All snug, sir, hatches battened down, makin' way under skysails and royals, hands piped to quarters, and here's your humble servant ready for orders! Shiver my timbers, where's the skipper? Piped me up with a 'baccy pipe, he did, and where's he gone? Skipper ahoy! Come for
orders, I be, and ever yours to command, Lemuel Mizzen! That's me!"
Freddie put the pipe down on the floor, rose to his feet, and looked over the counter.
Leaning on his elbow on the other side of the counter was a Sailorman, with a wide blue collar open at the throat, a flat blue cap with a black ribbon on the back of his head, and a green patch over his right eye.
CHAPTER VI
LEMUEL MIZZEN, A.B.
Freddie looked at the Sailorman, and the Sailorman straightened up and touched his cap. His face was brown as weathered oak, and creased like bark; his one eye was black and glittering; the hand which he raised to his cap was of the shape and nearly the size of a ham; and the chest and throat which emerged from his wide-open shirt-collar was as brown as his face, and big with muscles. There was a delicious odour of tar about him; you positively could not look at him without hearing wind whistling through ropes. He hitched up his trousers with his other hand and said:
"Ay, ay, skipper! Here I be as big as life, all ready fer orders!"