compelled
to take his turn in scouring the floors and other menial tasks, but
after emitting a stream of hot language, which ever appears to flow
very freely from the lips of sailor men, he went his way with great
cheerfulness. He joked with his fellow prisoners, and being of a
loquacious turn, had many things to tell them of the doings of his
hero, Captain Benbow.

Vetch, on the contrary, was what the Scriptures call a "continual
dropping." He kept himself apart, sulking the livelong day, scarce
ever speaking, and when he did speak using a tone which the Grand
Turk might employ towards a beggar. It was true enough that the
prisoners were inferior to him in quality, but, their lot and
circumstances being the same, it was decidedly a mistake to make
the others feel their inferiority, and, as I think, a mark of ill
breeding to boot. His few words were sneers, and he had a
contemptuous way of looking at a man that made one itch to thrash
him. At length he was thrashed, and very smartly, by a man in our
dormitory, and after that he was utterly ignored, by general
consent. It happened in this wise.

One bleak day of mud and rain, when we were driven by the weather
out of the courtyard into the lower rooms of the barracks, and were
sitting in doleful dumps, at a loss how to pass the time, Joe
Punchard cried out of a sudden:

"Come, souls, what's a spell of foul weather to men that have
sailed the salt seas! Haul forward your stools, mates, and we'll
have a concert and make all snug. I warrant some of you can troll a
ditty, though ye be too modest to own it; and not being plagued wi'
modesty myself, I'll heave anchor first."

I knew, nothing of Joe's musical powers, and it was with no little
surprise I discovered that he had an excellent voice of the pitch
they call barytone. He began:

Of all the lives, I ever say,
A pirate's be for I;
Hap what hap may he's allus gay
And drinks an' bungs his eye.
For his work he's never loath;
An' a-pleasurin' he will go;
Tho' sartin sure to be popt off,
Yo ho, with the rum below.

At the conclusion of the stanza his audience broke into loud
applause. And then, with a sheepish air that set me a-smiling,
Joseph Runnles, my bedfellow, the little silent man of whom I have
spoken, drew out of his pocket the parts of a flute, and putting
them together, set it to his lips and accompanied Joe through the
next stanza, picking up the tune with a facility that spoke well
for his musical