Boat-keepers at the swinging-boom stand up, and salute officers arriving or departing in boats. If Captain Mainwright’s gig, in going to or coming from the shore, had met a boat containing a flag-officer,--that is, the commander of a squadron,--etiquette would require that his crew should toss oars (hold them up, perpendicularly), and the captain would touch his cap to his superior. Commissioned officers, in passing him, would lie on their oars, and warrant-officers would toss oars to him. These are tokens of respect which every inferior must yield to his superior. Custom or particular regulations adjust all these matters with the most punctilious care. When Captain Mainwright had gone up the side, and the accomplished Mr. Dickey had also disappeared over the bulwarks, Jack secured his boat, and went on deck. As he passed along the crowd of idlers, he was roughly congratulated upon his good fortune. He made his way down to the berth-deck, where he found Tom Livingstone. “Give us your flipper, Jack!” said the veteran, as he rose from the mess-bench. “I give ye joy, Jack! It’s a good thing to have someone in the wardroom to speak a good word for you.” “Then you think I owe my promotion to the favor of Mr. Bankhead?” replied Jack, as Tom wrung his hand. “Sartin of it, my pretty piper.” “Then I would rather throw up my new rating,” added our hero. “Why, you lollipop! I don’t say you didn’t desarve it; for every man aboard knows as how you did. It is not every man that desarves promotion as gets it.” “I don’t ask any favors,” continued Jack. “Yes, you do, my lively gigsman. You want your desarts, and you’ll find that’s the greatest favor you can get.” “I don’t see it in that light.” “Are you going for to kick because you’ve got a good friend in the wardroom?” demanded Tom sternly. “No; but I don’t want any favors not bestowed upon the rest of the men.” “It’s all right: no mistake about that. The whole crew would like to give you three cheers for what you did; and every mother’s son on ’em would vote to make you boatswain this minute, if they could.” “Doubted!” “Yes, they would: we’ll except that piratical Becket, or such car’on as he is. For all that, my merry to’gallant-man, kissin’ goes by favor. There’s a score of old sheet-anchor men for’ad that has weathered Cape Horn a dozen times; melted the grease out of their bodies in the East Indies, and been froze up in the arctic; and what are they now? Able seamen, Jack,--that’s all. They don’t get so much pay as you do, that never went out of sight of land in a man-of-war. You’re lucky, Jack, and you ought to be thankful for what you’ve got.” “I am thankful Tom. But why didn’t the captain choose a cockswain from these sheet-anchor men?”