Mac?

"And the rest of the crew's no more 'saline' than its 'orfficers.'
That's the way they say it, ain't it, Mac? Little 'Arry, the
galley-slave, was a knock-about artist in the London music-halls before
he 'eard the sea a-callin', and now he doesn't 'eed nothin' else, do
you, Harry? And you'll hear the sea a-callin' that nice big breakfast of
yours just as soon as we get outside the Heads, won't you, Harry? And
then you won't 'eed nothin' else for quite a while. And so'll Mac hear
the sea a-calling his breakfast, and so'll I, and so'll all the rest of
us--every mother's son. It's a fine lot of Jack Tars we are, the whole
bunch of us. Did I tell you that one of my quartermasters is an
ex-piano-tuner, and that the other was a Salvation Army captain before
he entered the Senior Service for the duration? And my Chief--that's him
you hear alternating between tinkering and swearing at the engines on
the other side of that bulkhead you're leaning against--owned a
motor-boat of his own before the War, and appears to have divided his
waking hours between racing that and his stable of motor-cars? You can
tell he was a gentleman once by the fluency of his cussing. He's the
only man I've met over here that could give yours truly any kind of a
run in dispensing the pungent persiflage; but I had the advantage of
driving mules as a kid.

"But cussing, though it helps with a lot of things, doesn't make a
sailor, and the Chief's no more of a Jack Tar than me or Mac or Harry.
Fact is, that the only man aboard who ever made his living out of the
sea before the war is a fisherman from the Hebrides; and even the
glossary in the back of my Bobbie Burns won't translate his lingo. Two
or three times, when the sea has been kicking up a bit, he has managed
to tell us that no self-respecting God-fearing sailor would be oot in
such weather. Possibly he's been right; but, as none of us are sailors,
we don't feel called on to pay much attention to his ravings. Our duty
is to harass any Huns that encroach on our beat; and the fact that we've
had a modicum of success in that line proves you don't have to be a
sailor to qualify for the job. Which don't mean, though," he concluded
with a smile of sad resignation as he rose and reached for his
oil-skins, "that I don't hope and pray that I'll develop the legs and
stomach of a sailor before the war's over."

When breakfast was eaten, forward and aft, all hands were piped on deck,
and in less than ten