"Yes, you can bet high on that," said Jeff, "and the interest, too."
"Yes," said the sea-lawyer, "but you needn't be fool enough to pay it. If every man stood up for his rights, they wouldn't gouge him in that style. A man can't go ashore and drink a drop, and have a bit of a time—and that's what he goes ashore for, of course—but he must have a long bill of calaboose fees tacked to his account; and that d—d twenty-five per cent added on. If they charge it to me, they'll never get it, that's all. I know what they've got a right to do."
"I don't know nothin' about the rights," said Jeff, "but I know the old man will charge it to you, and make you pay it, too."
"Well, you'll see," said Burley. "I'll have my rights."
"What are you blowing about your rights?" put in the cooper, who had just come forward with his pipe freshly loaded, an indication that some ridiculous lie was also charged and ready to be fired with the tobacco. "You've got no rights. The rights are all in one end of the ship, and the wrongs in the other. Why, when I was out in the old Deucalion," pausing to clear his pipe, and thereby fixing the attention of all his auditors, "we had a black fellow called Sam. He had a head harder than Rock Redonda. We used to put pieces of tobacco on top of the windlass-bitts, and then let him butt the bitts till he brought the tobacco down and put it in his pocket. He would let a man split a serving mallet on his head any time, for a drink of grog. But most of the serving mallets were soft wood or ash, made out of old oar looms, so they'd split quite easily. Well, I come it over him once. I was to give him a whole bottle of liquor to stand up under any wooden mallet that I chose to use. I had a white oak one down in my chest, and I brought it up and struck him about ten blows as tight as I could spring before I shivered it. The darkey stood his ground like a rock, and won the bottle of liquor, and drank it, too. His skull wasn't hurt a bit, but his eyes were knocked all asquint, and he never got 'em straight afterwards!"
"Here, Cooper, take my hat. It's the only one I've got, but you've earned it," said Jeff.
"No, no," said the indignant disciple of Pepper. "I don't want your old jug. Maybe you think I'm romancing, but I'm just telling you the plain truth. But you've put me out, and I haven't finished my story. The point I was going to illustrate was, that the rights were all in one end of the ship, and the wrongs in the other. Well, on the passage home, one day we were reefing the maintopsail, and this black Sam fell on the yard, and went smack through the bottom of the waist boat, head first, overboard. We lowered a boat and managed to save him. He wasn't much hurt, but the boat was ruined. She was a boat that we had bought out of an English colonial whaler, and was built of that sweet-scented yellow wood that grows in Van Diemen's land. You've seen it, Jeff, and you know just how brittle it is. Well, when Sam's head struck in the bottom of the boat, the splits flew in all directions, just like throwing a stone in the middle of a pane of glass. So the boat was past all repairing. Well, when we got home, would you believe it? Old Captain Harper had charged Sam sixty dollars, the whole value of a new boat, and Sam had to pay it out of his voyage! He made inquiries, and found it would be cheaper to pay the bill than to stand a lawsuit about it."
"O, I've heard that story, or something like it, in Nantucket," said the boy Kelly.
"Yes, so have I," said Obed B.
"But you boys never believed it was true, did you?" asked the cooper.