I
took it for something else, and d--d the ring--bolt incontinently. Caboose,
the cook, was passing with his mate, a Jamaica negro of the name of John
Crow, at the time. "Don't d--n the remains of your fellow--mortals, Master
Cringle; that is my leg." The cook of a man--of--war is no small beer; he
is his Majesty's warrant--officer, a much bigger wig than a poor little
mid, with whom it is condescension on his part to jest.
It seems to be a sort of rule, that no old sailor who has not lost a limb,
or an eye at least, shall be eligible to the office; but as the kind of
maiming is so far circumscribed that all cooks must have two arms, a
laughable proportion of them have but one leg. Besides the honour, the
perquisites are good; accordingly, all old quartermasters, captains of
tops, etc. look forward to the cookdom, as the cardinals look to the
popedom; and really there is some analogy between them, for neither are
preferred from any especial fitness for the office. A cardinal is made
pope because he is old, infirm, and imbecile,--our friend Caboose was made
cook because he had been Lord Nelson's coxswain, was a drunken rascal, and
had a wooden leg; for, as to his gastronomical qualifications, he knew no
more of the science than just sufficient to watch the copper where the
salt junk and potatoes were boiling. Having been a little in the wind
overnight, he had quartered himself, in the superabundance of his heroism,
at a gun where he had no business to be, and in running it out, he had
jammed his toe in a scupper hole, so fast that there was no extricating
him; and notwithstanding his piteous entreaty "to be eased out handsomely,
as the leg was made out of a plank of the Victory, and the ring at the end
out of one of her bolts," the captain of the gun finding, after a stout
pull, that the man was like to come home in his hand without the leg, was
forced "to break him short off," as he phrased it, to get him out of the
way, and let the carriage traverse.
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