Sambo's fiddle was singing (as only voices and fiddles can sing) a melody to which the heads and toes of the company soon began to nod and beat: "La, l[)e] l[=a] la la, la la la, l[=a] l[)e] la, la L[=a], le l[=a] la la, la la la, la--l[)e] la la," hummed the boatswain.

"Lor' bless me, Mr.O'Moore, I heard that afore you were born, though I'm blessed if I know where.

But it's a genteel pretty thing!" "It's all about roses and nightingales!" shouted Dennis, with comical grimaces.
"Hear! hear!" answered the oldest and hairiest-looking of the sailors, and the echoes of his approbation only died away to let the song begin.
Then the notes of Sambo's fiddle also dropped off, and I heard Dennis O'Moore's beautiful voice for the first time as he gave his head one desperate toss and began: "There's a bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream, And the nightingale sings round it all the night long.
In the time of my childhood 'twas like a sweet dream To sit in the roses and hear the bird's song." One by one the pipes were rested on the smokers' knees; they wanted their mouths to hear with.

I don't think the assembled company can have looked much like exiles from flowery haunts of the nightingale, but we all shook our heads, not only in time but in sympathy, as the clear voice rose to a more passionate strain: "That bower and its music I never forget; But oft when alone in the bloom of the year, I think--is the nightingale singing there yet?
Are the roses still bright by the calm Bendemeer ?" I and the oldest and hairiest sailor were sighing like furnaces as the melody recommenced with the second verse: "No, the roses soon withered that hung o'er the wave, But some blossoms were gathered while freshly they shone, And a dew was distilled from their flowers, that gave All the fragrance of summer when summer was gone." If making pot-pourri after my mother's old family recipe had been the chief duty of able-bodied seamen, this could not have elicited more nods of approbation.

But we listened spell-bound and immovable to the passion and pathos with which the singer poured forth the conclusion of his song: "Thus memory draws from delight, ere it dies, An essence that breathes of it many a year; Thus bright to my soul--as 'twas then to my eyes-- Is that bower on the banks of the calm Bendemeer." And then (as somebody said) the noise we made was enough to scare the sea-gulls off the tops of the waves.
"You scored that time, Mr.O'Moore," said the boatswain.