hen you were lolling about in the waist below there, just now,"
put in my friend, Master Spokeshave, who had been pretending to look-out
from his end of the bridge because he thought he ought to do so as Mr
Fosset was there, although he really couldn't possibly see anything aft
from that position on the port side, on account of the wheel-house and
funnel, which were of course abaft the bridge, blocking the view. The
cantankerous little beggar sniffed his beak of a nose in the air as if
trying to look down on me, though he was half a head shorter, and spoke
in that nasty sneering way of his that always made me mad. He did enjoy
growling at any one when he had the chance; and so he went on snarling
now, like a cat behind an area railing at a dog which couldn't get at it
to stop its venomous spitting. "I saw you, my joker, star-gazing down
there, instead of coming up here to relieve me at the proper time! I
believe you only sang out about the ship to cover your laziness and take
a rise out of us!"

"I did nothing of the sort, Mr Spokeshave," I answered indignantly, for
the little beast sniggered away and grinned at Mr Fosset as if he had
said something uncommonly smart at my expense. I saw, however, where
the shoe pinched. He was angry at my having kept him waiting for his
tea, and hence his spiteful allusion to my being late coming on watch;
so I was just going to give him a sharp rejoinder, referring to his love
for his little stomach, a weak point with him and a common joke with us
all below at meal-times, when, ere I could get a word out of the
scathing rebuke I intended for him, the smoke trail suddenly lifted a
bit to leeward and leaving the horizon clear, I caught sight again of
the ship I had seen over the rail. This, of course, at once changed the
current of my thoughts; and so, without troubling my head any further
about "Conky," I sang out as eagerly as before to the first mate, all
the more anxious now to prove that I had been right in the first
instance, "There she is, Mr Fosset, there she is!"

"Where on earth are you squinting now, boy?" said he, a bit huffy at not
making her out and apparently inclined to Spokeshave's opinion that I
had not really seen her at all. "Where away?"

"There, sir, away to leeward," cried I, almost jumping over the bridge
rail in my excitement. "She's nearly abreast of our mizzen chains and
not a mile off. She seems coming up on the port tack, sir!"

For, strangely en