It is the business of Jimmy Legs to make a tour of inspection through the ship just before "morning quarters." The ship is then supposed to be in shape for the commanding officer's approval, and the men's wearing-gear all stowed away in ditty bags. It never is. There is always to be found a shirt hastily thrown here, a shoe lying loose there, a neckerchief and lanyard hanging over a ditty-box. This gear the Legs gathers in impartially, no matter to whom it belongs, and thrusts into the "Lucky Bag" (which is generally known by a far more opprobrious epithet), which he keeps for that purpose.
The only way the owner of the gear may get it back is by reporting himself at the mast, that is, to the commanding officer, for remissness in stowing gear, which means, generally, a lopping off of liberty privileges. Every month the contents of the bag of gear thus accumulated are sold aboard at auction to the highest bidder among the jackies.
Finally, there is hardly a day in port that the Legs is not sent ashore along toward noon to hunt up derelicts. These are liberty-breakers carousing in town regardless of the fact that their services aboard are needed, and that punishment awaits them when they return for overstaying their leaves. Jimmy Legs is called for by the commander and gets a list of the men to be returned.
Into the steam-cutter hops Legs, and away he goes after the derelicts. He generally returns with them. He may be gone for some hours, or for a day, but when he comes off to the ship, in shore boat or cutter, he has the men he went after along with him.
So much for Jimmy Legs, whose never-ending and varied duties Hiram Deering, a grizzled old man-o'-warsman, performed most admirably on the Osprey.
The two men were pulled apart and the others had hardly gathered up their scattered ditty-bags and personal belongings when a commotion was observed among the officers on the bridge. They were gazing through their glasses at a puff of smoke on the north-western horizon. In the course of fifteen minutes it had grown to a small-sized cloud.
"She must have legs, to overhaul us in this way," observed Ensign Dobson, with his binocular at his eyes. "How much were we making at the last log, quartermaster?"
"Fifteen strong, sir."
"Then that fellow's doing a good twenty," added the officer. "Can you make him out, Mr. Liddon?"