The skipper, and Mr. Sherman, and the second mate approached; and when the boatswain was going to speak, the captain called: “Draw closer, my lads. The gentleman can’t talk to you out of earshot.” The men, like shy schoolboys, elbowed each other into a smaller semicircle, and stood staring and grinning over one another’s shoulders. “All ready, sir?” asked the boatswain. “Fire away!” answered the skipper. The boatswain took off his hat and placed it on the capstan; then drew from it a handkerchief of the size of a union-jack, with which he dried his face and mouth; he next fished in his coat pocket and produced a small canvas bag, very neatly sewn. This he held in his hand, and turned to Holdsworth. “We don’t know your name, sir, and we’re werry sorry that we don’t, ’cause there’s a great deal in a name when you give a thing, ’specially to them as has to speechify, and it helps ’em along like. (‘So it dew, mate!’ from the crowd, and several heads nodded emphatically.) I’m a seafarin’ man myself, and come from Greenwich, and had no larnin’ taught me when I was a boy, and so the present company will please hexcuse bad grammar and the likes of that, seein’ that a seafarin’ man don’t want to know many words besides those as consarn a ship. We’re all sailors here, if the skipper will let me call him a sailor----” “Ma conscience! and what else am I?” cried the skipper. “Well, as I was a sayin’,” continued the boatswain, looking discomfited for a moment, “we’re all sailors here, barrin’ you, sir, and Mr. Sherman, and it’s only men as go to sea as can know what an awful thing a shipwreck is, and what a bad look-out thirst and hunger is, and the feelings that overcome a man when he is in a open boat miles away from the shore. We reckon that you’ve passed through a deal o’ sufferin’, and being sailors, it’s only right and proper that we should all of us, from the skipper down, let you know by a better sign than mere talk, which don’t go far, though it may be werry comfortin’ sometimes, when you can understand what’s said to you--I say that we want to let you know how sorry we are for you, and how werry grateful we are that we belong to the wessel that picked you up; and so, sir”--here he handed the bag to Holdsworth--“all hands clubbed together to make up this trifle o’ money jist to buy you a few things when you get ashore; and I’m proud to say there ain’t a man among us, though I _did_ think one was goin’ to back out, that hasn’t given something----Beggin’ your parding a moment; them scraps o’ paper in the purse are horders wrote by me, and signed by the men as hasn’t got ready money about ’em, for the captain to pay you the valley in silver which they bear in figures; and that money to be deducted from their wages. That’s all, I think, sir,” he concluded, looking at the skipper. A voice called out, “Three cheers for the gentleman!” and forth burst a roar from the iron throats of the men that made the decks ring again.