When this compound of cabin and forecastle received the order just related, he touched the lock of hair on his forehead, a ceremony he always used before he spoke to Sir Gervaise, the hat being removed at some three or four yards' distance, and made his customary answer of-- "Ay-ay-sir--your honour has been a young gentleman yourself, and knows what a young gentleman's stomach gets to be, a'ter a six months' fast in the Bay of Biscay; and a young gentleman's _boy's_ stomach, too.

I always thinks there's but a small chance for us, sir, when I sees six or eight of them light cruisers in my neighbourhood.

They're som'mat like the sloops and cutters of a fleet, which picks up all the prizes." "Quite true, Master Galleygo; but if the light cruisers get the prizes, you should recollect that the admiral always has his share of the prize-money." "Yes, sir, I knows we has our share, but that's accordin' to law, and because the commanders of the light craft can't help it.

Let 'em once get the law on their side, and not a ha'pence would bless our pockets! No, sir, what we gets, we gets by the law; and as there is no law to fetch up young gentlemen or their boys, that pays as they goes, we never gets any thing they or their boys puts hands on." "I dare say you are right, David, as you always are.

It wouldn't be a bad thing to have an Act of Parliament to give an admiral his twentieth in the reefers' foragings.