t this highly improper language; but
one scrap at a time was quite enough, and he wisely concluded not to
notice the offensive remark.

"I'm not used to having any man speak to me in that kind of a way,"
added Noddy, rather tamely.

"You are not in a drawing-room! Do you think the cap'n is going to take
his hat off to the cabin-boy?" replied the mate, indignantly.

"I don't ask him to take his hat off to me. He spoke to me as if I was a
dog."

"That's the way officers do speak to men, whether it is the right way or
not; and if you can't stand it, you've no business here."

"I didn't know they spoke in that way."

"It's the fashion; and when man or boy insults an officer as you did
the captain, he always knocks him down; and serves him right too."

Noddy regarded the mate as a very reasonable man, though he swore
abominably, and did not speak in the gentlest tones to the men. He
concluded, therefore, that he had made a blunder, and he desired to get
out of the scrape as fast as he could. The mate explained to him sundry
things, in the discipline of a ship, which he had not before understood.
He said that when sailors came on board of a vessel they expected more
or less harsh words, and that it was highly impudent, to say the least,
for a man to retort, or even to be sulky.

"Captain McClintock is better than half of them," he added; "and if the
men do their duty, they can get along very well with him."

"But he was drunk," said Noddy.

"That's none of your business. If he was, it was so much the more stupid
in you to attempt to kick up a row with him."

Noddy began to be of the same opinion himself; and an incipient
resolution to be more careful in future was flitting through his mind,
when he was summoned to the cabin by Mollie. He went below; the captain
was not there--he had retired to his state-room; and his daughter sat
upon the locker, weeping bitterly.

"How happy I expected to be! How unhappy I am!" sobbed she. "Noddy you
have made me feel very bad."

"I couldn't help it; I didn't mean to make you feel bad," protested
Noddy.

"My poor father!" she exclaimed, as she thought again that the blame was
not the boy's alone.

"I am very sorry for what I did. I never went to sea before, and I
didn't know the fashions. Where Is your father? Could I see him?"

"Not now; he has gone to his state-room. He will be better by and by."

"I want to see him when he comes out. I will try and make it right with