s dropped in. But my son and me never took a blessed drop,
except from a gin-bottle full of cold water, till we see all the others
with their scuppers well awash. Then Bob he findeth fault--Lor' how
beautiful he done it!--with the scantling of the stuff; and he shouteth
out, 'Mother, I'm blest if I won't stand that old guinea bottle of
best Jamaica, the one as you put by, with the cobwebs on it, for Lord
Admiral. No Lord Admiral won't come now. Just you send away, and hoist
it up.'

"Rickon Goold pricked up his ugly ears at this; and Mother Tapsy did it
bootiful. And to cut a long yarn short, we spliced him, captain, with
never a thought of what would come of it; only to have our revenge, your
honor. He showed himself that greedy of our patent rum, that he never
let the bottle out of his own elbow, and the more he stowed away, the
more his derrick chains was creaking; but if anybody reasoned, there he
stood upon his rights, and defied every way of seeing different, until
we was compelled to take and spread him down, in the little room with
sea-weeds over it.

"With all this, Bob and me was as sober as two judges, though your honor
would hardly believe it, perhaps; but we left him in the dark, to come
round upon the weeds, as a galley-raker ought to do. And now we began
to have a little drop ourselves, after towing the prize into port, and
recovering the honor of the British navy; and we stood all round to
every quarter of the compass, with the bottom of the locker still not
come to shallow soundings. But sudden our harmony was spoiled by a
scream, like a whistle from the very bottom of the sea.

"We all of us jumped up, as if a gun had broke its lashings; and the
last day of judgment was the thoughts of many bodies; but Bob he down at
once with his button-stump gun-metal, and takes the command of the whole
of us. 'Bear a hand, all on you,' he saith, quite steadfast; 'Rickon
Goold is preaching to his own text to-night.' And so a' was, sure
enough; so a' was, your honor.

"We thought he must have died, although he managed to claw off of it,
with confessing of his wickedness, and striking to his Maker. All of
us was frightened so, there was no laugh among us, till we come to talk
over it afterward. There the thundering rascal lay in the middle of that
there mangerie of sea-stuff, as Mother Precious is so proud of, that the
village calleth it the 'Widow's Weeds.' Blest if he didn't think that
he were a-lying at the bott