“A queer bit of a town, good-man Fairweather, the saints have built up for themselves,” exclaimed a man in a sailor’s jacket.  “Do you know what it looks like to me?”

“How should I know, Capt.  Sparhawk, how Boston looks to you?” answered the man addressed.

“That depends upon the strength of the liquor, methinks,” said a third.

“That answer, Billy Pantry,” said the Captain, “for a lubber that knows not the difference between the futtock shrouds and Jacob’s ladder, and whose head is so little and his paunch so big, is what my old schoolmaster called a Lucy—­Lucy—­damn the other part of the name—­there I miss stays, by Neptune!—­anyhow, it begun with a Nat, but there was more of it.”

“Natwood,” suggested Billy Pantry.  “I know a Polly Natwood in Suffolk, one of the completest wenches”—­

“If she was not completer than thy wit,” interrupted the Captain, “her figure-head was left unfinished.  But, avast there; we are drifting off soundings.  Where was I?  Aye; belay, I have it.  I was telling you what your beggarly town looks like.”

“Aye, but about Lucy,” said another, who had not spoken before, and whose perception looked dimly out of his hazy eyes!  “I should like to hear first about her.  I always liked the women.”

“Hear old Wheat,” cried the Captain—­“the wicked villain.  All the knowledge he has of the women, I’ll be qualified on the main brace, is what he got from Betty Quickfist when she hit him a cuff on the ear for his impudence, and twisted it out o’ shape, as ye may see without taking a quadrant for the observation.”

“Why,” said Billy Pantry, turning his mess-mate’s head about, “his two ears are much alike, and, as you say, Captain, lop damnably; so he must have caught it on both of them, though this one here, away to windward, looks as if it had been cut off and stuck on again.”

“Shut up your duff-trap,” said Wheat, gruffly, “or I’ll send your teeth on a cruise down your throat.”

“Come, come,” cried the Captain, “I choose to do all the quarreling for this company.  How now, my masters, is there to be no discipline when my foot is off the quarter-deck?  If another man speaks above his breath, by the beard of father Neptune, I will stop his grog.  Where was I?  Let me take the latitude once more.  Aye, here away bearing up to tell how I liked this prig of a town.”

“Blast my tarry top-lights and to’gallant eyebrows.  Do you call this a town?” demanded Bill.  “Folk does not call a thing like this a town in old Hingland.”

“Aye, old England forever,” cried the Captain, standing up.  “Boys, fill your cups all round, and we will drink a health to our dear old mammy.”

“I should like to pleasure you, Captain,” said one of the citizens, “and will drink in all reason till sundown, but there is a law against drinking healths.”

“I suppose there will be a law next,” exclaimed the Captain, “against eating, and that will finish the job.  The rest of you may do as you like, but Jack Sparhawk never yet was afraid of any man, and is not going now to strike his peak to Admiral Winthrop.  So here’s a toast for ye: