"I am very sorry that you have no appetite," said Jack Small, with his mouth very full, and quite protectingly, to his skipper; "very sorry, indeed, sir: and, as you cannot make your breakfast without any milk, I think, sir, that the midshipmen's berth could lend you a bottle." "The devil they can, younker. Oh, oh! It's good and fresh, hey?" "Very good and fresh, sir," said the midshipman, ramming down the words with a large wadding of hot roll. "We must borrow some of it, by all means," said the captain; "but let the midshipmen's servant bring it here himself." The necessary orders having been issued, the bottle of milk and the boy appeared. "Did you know," said Captain Fitzalban, turning to his first lieutenant, "that the midshipmen's berth was provided with milk, and that too after being at sea a month?"--"Indeed I did not; they are better provided than we are, at least in this respect, in the ward-room." "Do you think,--do you think," said the captain, trembling with rage, "that any of the young blackguards dare milk my cow?"--"It is not easy to say what they dare not do." However, the cork was drawn, and the milk found not only to be very fresh indeed, but most suspiciously new. In the latitude of the Caribbean Islands liquids in general are sufficiently warm, so the captain could not lay much stress upon that. "As fine milk as ever I tasted," said the captain. "Very good indeed, sir," said the midshipman, overflowing his cup and saucer with the delicious liquid. "Where do the young gentlemen procure it?" resumed the captain, pouring very carefully what remained after the exactions of John Small into the cream-jug, and moving it close to his own plate.--"It stands us rather dear, sir," said Mr. Littlejohn,--"a dollar a bottle. We buy it of Joe Grummet, the captain of the waisters." The captain and first lieutenant looked at each other unutterable things. Joe Grummet was in the cabin in an instant, and the captain bending upon him his sharp and angry glances. Joseph was a sly old file, a seaman to the backbone; and let the breeze blow from what quarter of the compass it would, he had always an eye to windward. Fifty years had a little grizzled his strong black hair, and, though innovation had deprived him of the massive tail that whilome hung behind, there were still some fancy curls that corkscrewed themselves down his weather-stained temples; and, when he stood before the captain, in one of these he hitched the first bend of the immense fore-finger of his right hand. He hobbled a little in his gait, owing to an unextracted musket-ball that had lodged in his thigh; consequently he never went aloft; and had been, for his merits and long services, appointed captain of the waist. The Honorable Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban said to the veteran mariner quickly, and pointing at the same time to the empty bottle, "Grummet, you have milked my cow."--"Unpossible, sir," said Grummet, bashing at a bow; "downright unpossible, your honour."