Old Daddy observed the peculiar relish with which the butcher took his glass; and mixing another, a good deal more potent, placed it before the fellow, and continued the conversation in these words: “I tell you what it is, Mr. Butcher—you are as humane a man as any in the ship, I dare say; but, if required, you know well, that you must do your duty, whether it is upon sheep or hogs?” “Surely, sir.” “Or upon dogs, either?” suddenly asked the inquisitor. “I don’t know about that,” stammered the butcher, quite taken by surprise, and thrown all aback. “Well—well,” said Daddy, “here’s another glass for you—a stiff north-wester. Come! tell us all about it now. How did you get rid of the dog?—of Shakings, I mean?” “Why, sir,” said the peaching rogue, “I put him in a bag—a bread bag, sir.” “Well!—what then?” “I tied up the mouth, and put him overboard—out of the midship lower-deck port, sir.” “Yes—but he would not sink?” said Daddy. “Oh, sir,” cried the butcher, now entering fully into the merciless spirit of his trade, “I put a four-and-twenty-pound shot into the bag along with Shakings.” “Did you?—Then, Master Butcher, all I can say is, you are as precious a rascal as ever went about unhanged. There—drink your grog, and be off with you!” Next morning when the officers were assembled at breakfast in the ward-room, the door of the captain of marines’ cabin was suddenly opened, and that officer, half shaved, and laughing through a collar of soap-suds, stalked out, with a paper in his hand. “Here,” he exclaimed, “is a copy of verses, which I found just now in my basin. I can’t tell how they got there, nor what they are about;—but you shall judge.” So he read the two following stanzas of doggerel:— “When the Northern Confed’racy threatened our shores, And roused Albion’s Lion, reclining to sleep, Preservation was taken of all the King’s Stores, Nor so much as a _Rope Yarn_ was launched in the deep. “But now it is Peace, other hopes are in view, And all active service as light as a feather, The Stores may be d—d, and humanity too, For SHAKINGS and _Shot_ are thrown o’erboard together!” I need hardly say in what quarter of the ship this biting morsel of cock-pit satire was concocted, nor indeed who wrote it, for there was no one but our good Daddy who was equal to such a flight. About midnight, an urchin—who shall be nameless—was thrust out of one of the after-ports of the lower deck, from which he clambered up to the marine officer’s port, and the sash happening to have been lowered down on the gun, the epigram, copied by another of the youngsters, was pitched into the soldier’s basin.