“Well, you may laugh as much as you please; but says he, ‘Jack, you are skipper, and I will obey your orders. What shall I do?’ says he. ‘Knot these reef-points in the foresail,’ says I; and he did it.” “All that may be, my noisy little boatman; but things is changed since you and Mr. Bankhead went on your last cruise. I s’pose you think he’ll take you into the cabin, rig you out in long togs, and mess you with the wardroom officers.” “I don’t expect anything of that sort, Tom: I don’t want him to do anything of that kind. I am willing to do my duty like any other fellow on board.” “So much the better, my darling; for Mr. Bankhead is too sensible a man for to make a baby of you. He aren’t a-going to feed you with warm milk. If he’s your friend, he’s going to make a man of you.” “I expect to fare just like my mess-mates,--no better, no worse; but I expect he will treat me like a Christian.” “He’ll do that, my jolly little beef-eater; but if you go sticking your flipper out to him, just like as if you was a wardroom officer, I’ll bet a month’s wages he won’t know you. Don’t you do it, Jack. You hain’t been thirty years in the navy, my precious little infant: you never saw Cape Horn; you never went up the Mediterranean; you never walked around a capstan board a man-o’-war. You don’t know no more about discipline nor a heathen do about Watts’s Hymns.” “What shall I do?” asked Jack, not a little puzzled by this exemplification of man-of-war discipline; and perhaps he was disposed to inquire if there was any use in having a friend in the wardroom, if he was not to be permitted to know him. “What shall you do? There, now my sweet little bone-cracker, them’s the most sensible words you’ve spoken for half an hour. What shall you do? That’s just what the publiken wanted to know when he smote his breast. He smote his breast bekase he wanted to know. He didn’t spile his shirt-bosom for nothin’, Jack. What shall you do, my blating little lamb?” “Yes, Tom; what shall I do?” asked Jack, highly amused as well as deeply edified by the profound remarks of the old blue-jacket. “And, if you don’t answer me pretty soon, I shall begin to think you are nothing but an old blower.” “Vast heavin’, Jack: respect my bald head, and never let that little tongue of yourn unkile anything that sounds like a nick-name. It’s a bad practice, and nothin’ but lubbers and marines ever does such things,” replied Tom sagely. Jack had his doubts upon this point, though he did not venture to express them, but again pressed his question. “What shall you do, my little snivelling milksop?--what shall you do?” “Yes; what shall I do, Tom? That’s what I want to know; and, if you don’t answer pretty soon, the boatswain’s whistle will cut short your yarn, as it did yesterday.”