“Nautical blunders seem uncommonly cheap,” I said. “You appear to have got a wonderful lot for one penny.”
“Look here!” he cried, bursting into a laugh as his eye lighted on another ballad:
“‘’Twas in the good ship Rover’—
that’s the name of it—
‘That time bound straight to Portugal.
Right fore and aft we bore;
But when we made Cape Ortugal,
A gae blew off the shore.
‘She lay, it did so shock her,
A log upon the main,
Till, sav’d from Davy’s locker,
We put to sea again.’”
Only a Harley or a Robson could do justice to the seaman’s face as he looked at me after putting down the paper—there is nothing in words to convey the sour astonishment and contempt in his expression.
“‘Right fore and aft we bore!’” he presently exclaimed. “Did any man ever hear the like of that? What sort of course is it? How’s her head when she’s bearing right fore and aft? And then think, arter lying like a log upon the main, of putting to sea again without going into harbour first!”
“I doubt if ye can beat that,” said one of the other sailors.
“Think not?” answered the old fellow quickly, “then what d’ye say to this out of a song here wrote down as ‘Spanking Jack’?—