d the sea man and boy for hard upon fifty
years, and the cry of his heart was still for water--water without
rum!--water fresh or salt! it mattered not what sort of water it was
so long as it _was_--water.

So as Joe Westlake found that he couldn't rest ashore he looked about
him, and, after a while, fell in with and purchased a smart little
cutter, which he re-christened the _Tom Bowling_, out of admiration of
the song which no sailor ever sang more sweetly than he. It was
perfectly consistent with his traditions as a man-of-wars man that,
having bought his little ship, he should arm her. He equipped her with
four small carronades and a pivoted brass six-pounder on the
forecastle. He then went to work to man her, but he did not very
easily find a crew. Joe was fastidious in his ideas of seamen, and
though some whom he cast his eye upon came very near to his taste, it
cost him a great deal of trouble to discover the particular set of
Jacks he wanted.

Three at last he found: Peter Plum, Bob Robins, and Tom Tuck. Joe was
admiral; Plum, coming next, combined a number of grades. He was
captain, first lieutenant, and boatswain. Robins was the ship's
working company, and Tom Tuck cooked and was the all-round handy man
of the _Tom Bowling_.

It was Mr. Joe Westlake's intention to live on board his cutter; he
furnished his cabin plainly and comfortably, and laid in a plentiful
stock of liquor and tobacco. As he was to cruise under his own flag,
and was indeed an admiral on his own account, he conferred with his
first lieutenant, Peter Plum, on the question of a colour: what
description of flag should he fly at his masthead? They both started
with the understanding that nothing under a fathom and a half in
length was worth hoisting. After much discussion it was agreed that
the device should consist of a very small jack in the top corner, and
in the middle a crown with a wooden leg under it--the timber toe being
in both Westlake's and Plum's opinion the most pregnant symbol of
Britannia's greatness that the imagination could devise.

Within a few months of his landing from the frigate out of which he
had been paid, Mr. Joseph Westlake was again afloat, but now in a
smart little vessel of his own. She had been newly sheathed with
copper, and when she heeled over from the breeze as she stretched
through the winding reaches of the river the metal shone like gold
above the wool-white line of foam through which the cutter washed