The Purser is a conjurer;
he can make a dead man chew tobacco"--insinuating that the accounts of
a dead man are sometimes subjected to post-mortem charges. Among
sailors, also, Pursers commonly go by the name of _nip-cheeses_.

No wonder that on board of the old frigate Java, upon her return from a
cruise extending over a period of more than four years, one thousand
dollars paid off eighty of her crew, though the aggregate wages of the
eighty for the voyage must have amounted to about sixty thousand
dollars. Even under the present system, the Purser of a line-of-battle
ship, for instance, is far better paid than any other officer, short of
Captain or Commodore. While the Lieutenant commonly receives but
eighteen hundred dollars, the Surgeon of the fleet but fifteen hundred,
the Chaplain twelve hundred, the Purser of a line-of-battle ship
receives thirty-five hundred dollars. In considering his salary,
however, his responsibilities are not to be over-looked; they are by no
means insignificant.

There are Pursers in the Navy whom the sailors exempt from the
insinuations above mentioned, nor, as a class, are they so obnoxious to
them now as formerly; for one, the florid old Purser of the
Neversink--never coming into disciplinary contact with the seamen, and
being withal a jovial and apparently good-hearted gentleman--was
something of a favourite with many of the crew.

CHAPTER XLIX.

RUMOURS OF A WAR, AND HOW THEY WERE RECEIVED BY THE POPULATION OF THE
NEVERSINK.

While lying in the harbour of Callao, in Peru, certain rumours had come
to us touching a war with England, growing out of the long-vexed
Northeastern Boundary Question. In Rio these rumours were increased;
and the probability of hostilities induced our Commodore to authorize
proceedings that closely brought home to every man on board the
Neversink his liability at any time to be killed at his gun.

Among other things, a number of men were detailed to pass up the rusty
cannon-balls from the shot-lockers in the hold, and scrape them clean
for service. The Commodore was a very neat gentleman, and would not
fire a dirty shot into his foe.

It was an interesting occasion for a tranquil observer; nor was it
altogether neglected. Not to recite the precise remarks made by the
seamen while pitching the shot up the hatchway from hand to hand, like
schoolboys playing ball ashore, it will be enough to say that, from the
general drift of their discourse--jocu