"I ’ll bate he’s figurin’ to lay outside some o’ them very ports an’ cut out some han’some prizes," said Falls, one of the gunners, looking down out of his hammock. Falls was a young man full of enthusiasm, who played the fiddle. "You ’ll find ’t will be all glory for him, an’ no prizes for you, my young musicianer!" answered Starbuck, who was a discouraged person by nature. Now that he had a real grievance his spirits seemed to rise. "Up hammocks all! Show a leg!" he gayly ordered the gunner. "Wall, I seldom seen so good a navigator as the cap’n in my time," insisted Staples. "He knows every man’s duty well’s his own, an’ that he knows to a maracle." "I ’ll bate any man in this fo’c’s’le that he ’s a gre’t fighter; you wait an’ see the little wasp when he ’s gittin’ into action!" exclaimed Chase, who had been with Paul Jones on the Alfred. "He knows no fear an’ he sticks at nothin’! You hold on till we ’re safe in Channel, an’ sight one o’ them fat-bellied old West Injyinen lo’ded deep an’ headed up for London. Then you ’ll see Gre’t Works in a way you niver expected." This local allusion was not lost upon most members of the larboard watch, and Starbuck’s wrongs, with the increasing size of his once useful nose, were quite disregarded in the hopeful laughter which followed. "Hand me the keerds," said one of the men lazily. "Falls, there, knows a couple o’ rale queer tricks." "You keep ’em dowsed; if he thinks we ain’t sleepin’ or eatin’, so ’s to git our courage up," said Staples, "he ’ll have every soul on us aloft. Le’ ’s set here where ’t ’s warm an’ put some kecklin’ on Starbuck; the cap’n ’s ’n all places to once, with eyes like gimblets, an’ the wind ’s a-blowin’ up there round the lubber holes like the mouth o’ hell." Chase, the Nantucket sailor, looked at him, with a laugh. "What a farmer you be," he exclaimed. "Makes me think of a countryman, shipmate o’ mine on the brig Polly Dunn. We was whaling in the South Seas, an’ it come on to blow like fury; we was rollin’ rails under, an’ I was well skeert myself; feared I could n’t keep my holt; him an’ me was on the fore yard together. He looked dreadful easy an’ pleasant. I thought he’d be skeert too, if he knowed enough, an’ I kind o’ swore at the fool an’ axed him what he was a-thinkin’ of. ’Why, ’t is the 20th o’ May,’ says he; ’all the caows goes to pastur’ to-day, to home in Eppin’!’" There was a cheerful chuckle from the audience. Grant alone looked much perplexed. "Why, ’t is the day, ain’t it?" he protested. "What be you all a-laughin’ at?"