e towards the galley and
brought up in front of the frying-pan.

"Wot's all that, cook?" he demanded, pointing to the writing.

"Wot, sir?" asked the innocent.

"On the frying-pan," replied Ben, scowling.

"That's chalk-marks," explained the cook, "to clean it with."

"It looks to me like writing," snapped the mate.

"Lor, no, sir," said the cook, with a superior smile.

"I say it does," said Ben, stamping.

"Well, o' course you know best, sir," said the cook, humbly. "I ain't
nothing of a scholard myself. If it's writing, wot does it say, please?"

"I don't say it is writing," growled the old man. "I say it looks like
it."

"I can assure you you're mistook, sir," said the cook, blandly; "you
see, I clean the sorsepans the same way. I only 'eard of it lately. Look
'ere."

He placed the articles in question upside down in a row on the deck, and
Tim, reading the legends inscribed thereon, and glancing from them
to the mate, was hastily led below in an overwrought condition by the
flattered Mr. Green.

"Cook," said the mate, ferociously.

"Sir," said the other.

"I won't 'ave the sorsepans cleaned that way.

"No, sir," said the cook, respectfully, "it does make 'em larf, don't
it, sir, though I can't see wot they're larfing at any more than wot you
can."

The mate walked off fuming, and to his other duties added that of
inspector of pots and pans, a condition of things highly offensive
to the cook, inasmuch as certain culinary arrangements of his, only
remotely connected with cleanliness, came in for much unskilled comment.

The overworked crew went ashore at the earliest possible moment after
their arrival in London, in search of recuperative draughts. Ben watched
them a trifle wistfully as they moved off, and when Nibletts soon after
followed their example without inviting him to join him in a social
glass of superior quality, smiled mournfully as he thought of the
disadvantages of rank.

He sat for some time smoking in silence, monarch of all he surveyed, and
then, gazing abstractedly at the silent craft around him, fell into
a pleasant dream, in which he saw himself in his rightful position as
master of the _Foam_, and Nibletts, cashiered for drunkenness, coming to
him for employment before the mast. His meditations were disturbed by
a small piece of coal breaking on the deck, at which he looked lazily,
until, finding it followed by two other pieces, he reluctantly came to
the conclusion that th