"Then I think the service was all the better for it. Now-a-days, in your crack ships, a mate has to go down in the hold or spirit-room, and after whipping up fifty empty casks, and breaking out twenty full ones, he is expected to come on quarter-deck as clean as if he was just come out of a band-box." "Well, there's plenty of water alongside, as far as the outward man goes, and iron dust is soon brushed off. However, as you say, perhaps a little too much is expected; at least, in five of the ships in which I was first-lieutenant, the captain was always hauling me over the coals about the midshipmen not dressing properly, as if I was their dry-nurse. I wonder what Captain Prigg would have said if he had seen such a turn-out as you, Mr Smith, on his quarter-deck." "I should have had one turn-out more," drawled Smith. "With your out-at-elbows jacket, there, eh!" continued Mr Appleboy. Smith turned up his elbows, looked at one and then at the other; after so fatiguing an operation, he was silent. "Well, where was I? Oh! It was about ninety-three or ninety-four, as I said that it happened--Tomkins, fill your glass and hand me the sugar-- how do I get on? This is Number 15," said Appleboy, counting some white lines on the table by him; and taking up a piece of chalk, he marked one more line on his tally. "I don't think this is so good a tub as the last, Tomkins, there's a twang about it--a want of juniper; however, I hope, we shall have better luck this time. Of course you know we sail to-morrow?" "I presume so, by the leg of mutton coming on board." "True--true; I'm regular--as clock-work. After being twenty years a first-lieutenant one gets a little method. I like regularity. Now the admiral has never omitted asking me to dinner once, every time I have come into harbour, except this time. I was so certain of it, that I never expected to sail; and I have but two shirts clean in consequence." "That's odd, isn't it?--and the more so, because he has had such great people down here, and has been giving large parties every day." "And yet I made three seizures, besides sweeping up those thirty-seven tubs." "I swept them up," observed Smith. "That's all the same thing, _younker_. When you've been a little longer in the service, you'll find out that the commanding officer has the merit of all that is done; but you're _green_ yet. Let me see, where was I? Oh!--It was about ninety-three or ninety-four, as I said. At that time I was in the Channel fleet--Tomkins, I'll trouble you for the hot water; this water's cold. Mr Smith, do me the favour to ring the bell.--Jem, some more hot water." "Please, sir," said Jem, who was bare-footed as well as bare-headed, touching his lock of hair on his forehead, "the cook had capsized the kettle--but he has put more on."