"Who has ever served his employers like Hiram Hudson ?" "Keep that song for your quarter-deck," retorted the mate, contemptuously.

"No; on second thoughts, just tell me how you have served your employers, you old humbug.

Give me chapter and verse to choose from.
Come now, the _Neptune ?"_ "Well, the _Neptune;_ she caught fire a hundred leagues from land." "How came she to do that ?" "That is my business.

Well, I put her head before the wind, and ran for the Azores; and I stuck to her, sir, till she was as black as a coal, and we couldn't stand on deck, but kept hopping like parched peas; and fire belching out of her portholes forward.

Then we took to the boats, and saved a few bales of silk by way of sample of her cargo, and got ashore; and she'd have come ashore too next tide and told tales, but somebody left a keg of gunpowder in the cabin, with a long fuse, and blew a hole in her old ribs, that the water came in, and down she went, hissing like ten thousand sarpints, and nobody the wiser." "Who lighted the fuse, I wonder ?" said Wylie.
"Didn't I tell ye it was 'Somebody' ?" said Hudson.