sir--that's right--just as I wished you to feel. How
time flies away. Why, Master Keene, you have been afloat nearly three
years."

"Within a month, Bob."

"And you're growing such a tall fellow, they won't keep you much longer
in the captain's gig, I expect: I shall be sorry for that. So Master
Tommy Dott is in another scrape."

"How?--I heard nothing of it."

"No, because it's only within this half-hour that he's got in it."

"Tell me."

"Why, sir, Mr Culpepper had fallen fast asleep on the gunroom table,
under the skylight, which, as you know, is always open, and his head had
fallen back, and his mouth was wide open: there was no other officer in
the gun-room except Mr Culpepper: and Tommy Dott, who perceived him,
asked Timothy Jenkins, the maintop-man, to give him a quid of tobacco;
well, Jenkins takes it out of his cheek, red-hot, as you may suppose,
and hands it to Master Tommy, who takes his perpendicular very
accurately, and drops the quid into the purser's open mouth.

"Mr Culpepper was almost choked, but after a terrible coughing, the
quid comes up again; notwithstanding, he turns as sick as a dog, and is
obliged to run to the basin in his cabin. Well, sir, as soon as he
comes out again, he goes up under the half deck, and inquires of the
sentry who it was that did it; and the sentry, who is that sulky fellow,
Martin, instead of knowing nothing about it, says directly, it was
Master Tommy; and now there's a formal complaint made by Mr Culpepper
on the quarter-deck, and Master Tommy will get it as sure as a gun."

"He don't know how to play a trick," replied I; "he is always found out
and punished: the great point is, not to be discovered--that's the real
pleasure in playing a trick."

"Well, you certainly do manage well, Master Keene; but I think it's
almost time you left them off now, you're getting an oldster. Why, you
must be seventeen, sir?"

"Yes, Bob, not very far from it."

"Well, I suppose I must say Mister Keene for the future."

"You may call be what you like, Bob; you have been a good friend to me."

"Well, sir, I only hope that Captain Delmar will make you a
post-captain, as he says, and that you'll get a fine frigate, and I'll
be your coxswain; but that's a long way to look to, and we shan't have
any more councils of war on the gangway then."

"No; but we may in the cabin, Cross."

"A large sail on the starboard bow," cried the look-out man forward.

"A large sail on the s