appearing to be the leading operations of a rowdy’s toilet; and, gathering round Lobster Bob, who has been steadily employed in opening oysters for all who have a midsummer faith in those mollusks, they commenced rapidly swallowing great quantities of the various kinds, which they seasoned to an alarming extent with coarse black pepper and brownish salt.  The fierce thirst, which, with these men, is not a consequence, because it is a thing that was and is and ever will be, was brought vividly to their minds by this unnecessary adstimulation; and now the bar-keeper, whose lager-beer was wellnigh exhausted, from its connection with ham-sandwiches, had enough to do to furnish them with whiskey, of which stimulant there was but too large a supply on hand.  The consequence of this was soon apparent in the ugly hilarity with which the rowdies entered upon the enjoyment of the afternoon.  First, in spite of the remonstrances of the Teuton whose proper chattel it was, they seized upon the large drum, with which they made an astounding din in the public promenades of the vessel, abetted, I am sorry to say, by some who ought to have known better,—­and did, probably, before the whiskey had curdled their wits.  In this proceeding, as in all their movements, they were marshalled by Flashy Joe, whose comparatively spruce appearance, when he came on board in the morning, had been a good deal deteriorated by broken slumbers in places not remote from coals, and by the subsequent course of drinks.  Quiet people were beginning to express some dissatisfaction with the noise made by these fellows, who, however, kept pretty much by themselves, as yet, and had got only to the musical stage of the proceedings, chorusing with unearthly yells a song contributed to the harmony of the afternoon by the first ruffian, the burden of which ran,—­

  “When this old hat was ny-oo, my boys,
  When this old hat was ny-oo-ooo!”

No voice in this chorus dwelt more decidedly by itself than the shrill one belonging to the small, spare man already spoken of as having a buxom young wife and blue cotton overalls.  During his wife’s adjournment to the ladies’ cabin, this person, I am obliged to record, had become boisterously drunk,—­a condition in which the contradictory elements that make up the characters of most men are generally developed to an instructive extent.  In his first paroxysm, the fighting man within him was all aroused, as is generally the case with diminutive men, when under the influence of drink.  Already he had tucked his sleeves up to fight a large German musician, who could have put him into the bell of his brass-horn and played him out, without much trouble.  But the song pacified him; and, with a misty sense of his importance in a convivial point of view, on account of the manner in which he had acquitted himself in the chorus, he now essayed a higher flight, and treated the party to a new version of “The Pope,” oddly condensed into one verse, as follows:—­