The second officer, who was walking the deck, being the officer of the watch, was also a very good-looking young man, with large black whiskers, and was two or three years younger than his messmate in the rigging. His frequent stoppages at the caboose-house, to confer with the cooks, indicated the second mate, who is always, for some reason or other, a sort of "Betty," or "cot-quean," as Shakspeare calls it, continually quiddling about the galley, to the annoyance of the doctor, as the ship's cook is generally called. About the after-hatchway were seated the gunner and sailmaker, both engaged patching old clothes,--while the old carpenter, like the captain, was reading the bible,--and the armorer was lying flat on his back, and singing. A very pretty boy of fourteen, an apprentice to the captain, was playing, or in sea language "skylarking," with a huge Newfoundland dog. I might as well complete the _role d'equipage_ of the good ship Albatross, by observing that Mr. Jonathan Bolton, M.D., the surgeon of the ship, and Mr. Elnathan Bangs, the supercargo, were neither of them on deck. Perhaps they were engaged with their breakfasts, or their toilets, or their devotions, or their studies, or--in short they were below. Just forward of the mainmast were what a painter would call the deeper shades of the picture, for there the black cook and his equally sable adjunct, the cook's mate, held their vaporous and dish-washing levee; while forth from the cloudy sanctuary occasionally pealed a burst of obstreporous laughter, that the most unpractised hearer might swear came from the lungs of a negro, without the trouble of invading their premises for further evidence. Upon either of these culinary worthies, to use the somewhat hyperbolical language of sailors, "lampblack would make a white mark." I cannot avoid taking occasion to remark here, that sailors, like the orientals, are exceedingly addicted to the use of tropes and figures of speech, to similes and metaphors. In fact, if any gentleman was about compiling a treatise on elocution, I would recommend to him to pass a year or two on board one of our men of war, where he would daily hear specimens of eloquence, known and unknown to exclusively terrestrial orators, whether in the halls of Congress, at a public dinner-table, or on a stump. There is the _narratio_, or anecdote, or sometimes the _long yarn_; the _aprosiopesis_, or sudden pause, very powerful when in good hands; the _apostrophe_, or addressing an absent person as though he was present; the _obtestatio_ and _invocatio_, two different modes of invoking the gods celestial or infernal; and lastly, the _simile_, or comparison, in which sailors are a thousand times more fruitful than Homer himself. The steward--who came up with the breakfast-dishes, &c., or "dog-basket," as it is called by them of the forecastle--was a thought lighter skinned than the cooks.