"There's talk and there's a fore-topsail-yard-ahoy voice for you," said Benson. "Oh, Mr. Smith will be looked after, he will. Now, chaps, pull for it, or the admiral will be waitin', and if that 'appens, 'twill be 'Stand from under.'" THE POLICY OF THE _POTLUCK_. Concerning the permanent and immutable characteristics of ships, the unhappy man who has never had his limited range of vision broadened by a trip in a sailing ship must of necessity know little. He probably falls into the fallacy, common even among those who follow the sea, that a partial or entire clearance of her "crowd" will quite alter her nature; whereas sailors being sailors--that is, people of certain fairly definite attributes--any given environment makes them much the same as those who preceded them. But entire changes in the _personnel_ of a vessel rarely take place. The officers change, but the crew remains: the crew goes, but officers stay. Or more frequently some few men are favourites of one or two of the officers, and they mingle with the new crew like yeast, till the ancient fermentation is visible once more. Ships (to speak thus of their companies) talk of the same subjects over a million miles of changing seas: they have a permanent stock of subjects. These include all which are perennially of interest to seafaring men, such as homes _versus_ boarding-houses, but they include also something more individual, something more intimately connected with the essence of that particular vessel. And the one unending topic of interest on board the _Potluck_ was foreign politics. How this came about no one knew, though many theories were set afloat and sunk again every Sunday afternoon. Some said that the first captain of the _Potluck_ was called Palmerstone, and that he introduced the subject of England _versus_ the world as soon as he came on board. Others swore that they had been told by a clerk in the employ of the firm that there had been a discussion over her very keel concerning the introduction into her frame of foreign oaks. "This was the way of it," said Jack Hart, who was the chief upholder of this particular theory, and the son of a little shipbuilder--"the lot that built her at Liverpool was the mixedest crowd of forsaken cranks as ever handled timber. So the clerk said. And one had a hankerin' for teak and another for hoak (with odd leanin's now and agin for Hafrican and Portugee and French hoak), and another he said 'Cuban Sabicu,' and another's word was 'Hackmatack' and 'chestnut' hevery time. So they shoved in bits here and bits there till she was a reg'lar junk-shop o' samples. And that's the reason she's a foreign talking argument ship. And a mighty good reason too." The crowd listened in silence.