n; about the
Captain, in his; about the various officers in the ward-room; about the
_reefers_ in the steerage, and their madcap frolickings, and about a
thousand other matters touching the crew themselves; all these--forming
the eternally shifting, domestic by-play of a man-of-war--proved
inexhaustible topics for our quidnuncs.

The animation of these scenes was very much heightened as we drew
nearer and nearer our port; it rose to a climax when the frigate was
reported to be only twenty-four hours' sail from the land. What they
should do when they landed; how they should invest their wages; what
they should eat; what they should drink; and what lass they should
marry--these were the topics which absorbed them.

"Sink the sea!" cried a forecastle man. "Once more ashore, and you'll
never again catch old Boombolt afloat. I mean to settle down in a
sail-loft."

"Cable-tier pinchers blister all tarpaulin hats!" cried a young
after-guard's-man; "I mean to go back to the counter."

"Shipmates! take me by the arms, and swab up the lee-scuppers with me,
but I mean to steer a clam-cart before I go again to a ship's wheel.
Let the Navy go by the board--to sea again, I won't!"

"Start my soul-bolts, maties, if any more Blue Peters and sailing
signals fly at my fore!" cried the Captain of the Head. "My wages will
buy a wheelbarrow, if nothing more."

"I have taken my last dose of salts," said the Captain of the Waist,
"and after this mean to stick to fresh water. Ay, maties, ten of us
Waisters mean to club together and buy a _serving-mallet boat_, d'ye
see; and if ever we drown, it will be in the 'raging canal!' Blast the
sea, shipmates! say I."

"Profane not the holy element!" said Lemsford, the poet of the
gun-deck, leaning over a cannon. "Know ye not, man-of-war's-men! that
by the Parthian magi the ocean was held sacred? Did not Tiridates, the
Eastern monarch, take an immense land circuit to avoid desecrating the
Mediterranean, in order to reach his imperial master, Nero, and do
homage for his crown?"

"What lingo is that?" cried the Captain of the Waist.

"Who's Commodore Tiddery-eye?" cried the forecastle-man.

"Hear me out," resumed Lemsford. "Like Tiridates, I venerate the sea,
and venerate it so highly, shipmates, that evermore I shall abstain
from crossing it. In _that_ sense, Captain of the Waist, I echo your
cry."

It was, indeed, a remarkable fact, that nine men out of every ten of
the Neversink's crew h