en so generally used, that for the last twenty years
most of his shipmates believed it to be his patronymic. When this
compound of cabin and forecastle received the order just related, he
touched the lock of hair on his forehead, a ceremony he always used
before he spoke to Sir Gervaise, the hat being removed at some three or
four yards' distance, and made his customary answer of--

"Ay-ay-sir--your honour has been a young gentleman yourself, and knows
what a young gentleman's stomach gets to be, a'ter a six months' fast in
the Bay of Biscay; and a young gentleman's _boy's_ stomach, too. I
always thinks there's but a small chance for us, sir, when I sees six or
eight of them light cruisers in my neighbourhood. They're som'mat like
the sloops and cutters of a fleet, which picks up all the prizes."

"Quite true, Master Galleygo; but if the light cruisers get the prizes,
you should recollect that the admiral always has his share of the
prize-money."

"Yes, sir, I knows we has our share, but that's accordin' to law, and
because the commanders of the light craft can't help it. Let 'em once
get the law on their side, and not a ha'pence would bless our pockets!
No, sir, what we gets, we gets by the law; and as there is no law to
fetch up young gentlemen or their boys, that pays as they goes, we never
gets any thing they or their boys puts hands on."

"I dare say you are right, David, as you always are. It wouldn't be a
bad thing to have an Act of Parliament to give an admiral his twentieth
in the reefers' foragings. The old fellows would sometimes get back some
of their own poultry and fruit in that way, hey! Atwood?"

The secretary smiled his assent, and then Sir Gervaise apologized to his
host, repeated the order to the steward, and the party proceeded.

"This fellow of mine, Sir Wycherly, is no respecter of persons, beyond
the etiquette of a man-of-war," the admiral continued, by way of further
excuse. "I believe His Majesty himself would be favoured with an essay
on some part of the economy of the cabin, were Galleygo to get an
opportunity of speaking his mind to him. Nor is the fool without his
expectations of some day enjoying this privilege; for the last lime I
went to court, I found honest David rigged, from stem to stern, in a
full suit of claret and steel, under the idea that he was 'to sail in
company with me,' as he called it, 'with or without signal!'"

"There was nothing surprising in that, Sir Gervaise," o