issued that moment from the works.

"Beautiful!" exclaimed a long-limbed, shambling fellow named Jim
Scroggles, "why, that ain't the word at all. Now, I calls it
splendiferous."

Scroggles looked round at his comrades, as if to appeal to their
judgment as to the fitness of the word, but not receiving any
encouragement, he thrust down the glowing tobacco in his pipe with the
end of his little finger, and reiterated the word "splendiferous" with
marked emphasis.

"Did ye ever see that word in Johnson?" inquired Gurney.

"Who's Johnson?" said Scroggles, contemptuously.

"Wot, don't ye know who Johnson is?" cried Gurney, in surprise.

"In course I don't; how should I?" retorted Scroggles. "There's ever so
many Johnsons in the world; which on 'em all do you mean?"

"Why, I mean Johnson wot wrote the diksh'nary--the great lexikragofer."

"Oh, it's _him_ you mean, is it? In course I've knowed him ever since I
wos at school."

A general laugh interrupted the speaker.

"At school!" cried Nickel Sling, who approached the group at that moment
with a carving knife in his hand--he seldom went anywhere without an
instrument of office in his hand--"At school! Wal now, that beats
creation. If ye wos, I'm sartin ye only larned to forgit all ye orter
to have remembered. I'd take a bet now, ye wosn't at school as long as
I've been settin' on this here windlass."

"Yer about right, Sling, it 'ud be unpossible for me to be as _long_ as
you anywhere, 'cause everybody knows I'm only five fut two, whereas
you're six fut four!"

"Hear, hear!" shouted Dick Barnes--a man with a huge black beard, who
the reader may perhaps remember was the first to "raise the oil."
"It'll be long before you make another joke like that, Gurney. Come,
now, give us a song, Gurney, do; there's the cap'n's darter standin' by
the foremast, a-waitin' to hear ye. Give us `Long, long ago.'"

"Ah! that's it, give us a song," cried the men. "Come, there's a good
fellow."

"Well, it's so long ago since I sung that song, shipmates," replied
Gurney, "that I've bin and forgot it; but Tim Rokens knows it; where's
Rokens?"

"He's in the watch below."

In sea parlance, the men whose turn it is to take rest after their long
watch on deck are somewhat facetiously said to belong to the "watch
below."

"Ah! that's a pity; so we can't have that 'ere partickler song. But
I'll give ye another, if ye don't object."

"No, no. All right; go ahead, Gurney!