and I makes him a low bow, and, says I, 'Thank ye kindly, mate,' says I, 'for putting it in my mind,' says I; 'you've been "on the account," in all likelihood, and that's where I'll go myself next trip, see if I won't;' and I ask your pardon, by sons, for you're both older men than me by a good spell, if that isn't the trade for a lad as looks to a short voyage and good wages, every man for himself, grab what you see, an' keep all you can?"
Thus appealed to, the elder seaman felt bound to give an opinion; so he cleared his throat and asked huskily—
"Have you tried it, mate? You seems like a lad as has dipped both hands in the tar-bucket, though you be but young and sarcy. Look ye, now, you hoisted signals first, an' I ain't a-going to show a false ensign, I ain't. You may call me Bottle-Jack; you won't be the first by a many, and I ain't ashamed o' my name."
The next in seniority then removed the pipe from his lips, and smiting the table with a heavy fist, observed, sententiously—
"And me, Smoke-Jack, young man. It's a rum name, ain't it, for as smart a foretopman as ever lay out upon a yard? but I've yarned it, that's what I sticks to. I've yarned it. Here's your health, lad; I wish ye well."
The three having thus gone through all the forms necessary to induce a long and staunch friendship amongst men of their class, Slap-Jack made a clean breast of it, as if he had known his companions for years.
"I have tried it, mates," said he; "and a queer game it is; but I don't care how soon I try it again. I suppose I must have been born a landsman somehow, d'ye see? though I can't make much of that when I come to think it over. It don't seem nat'ral like, but I suppose it was so. Well, I remember as I runned away from a old bloke wot wanted to make me a sawbones—a sawbones! and I took and shipped myself, like a young bear, aboard of the 'Sea Swallow,' cabin-boy to Captain Delaval. None o' your merchantmen was the 'Sea Swallow,' nor yet a man-o'-war, though she carried a royal ensign at the gaff, and six brass carronades on the main-deck. She was a waspish craft as ever you'd wish to see, an' dipped her nose in it as though she loved the taste of blue water, the jade!—wet, but weatherly,
