"Bless you, my lady, that comes o' not knowing the jometry of the thing," returned Brailsford, in a tone and expression that evidenced experience; "they aren't by no manner o' means in one permiskus heap, for as soon as we find an onfortinate shipmate has let go the life-lines--and its easy diskivered by pressing the hand over the heart and feeling for the pallypitation--just for all the world Master Frank, as you'd listen for the ticking of a watch in a noisy place--and if so be as you don't find that there's not never no wibration, but all is motionless, from the main-spring having been carried away, so that the wheels have run down, why we knows well enough that the doctor's knife and all his medicine chest wouldn't get him to lend a hand to run out another gun, or rouse aboard the main-tack--so we launches him out at the port as expended stores, and we turns-to with a hearty good will to avenge his death."
"But do they serve the officers so?" inquired Mrs. Heartwell, whose cheeks had become blanched during the plain recital of the seaman; "surely there is some funeral ceremony, some--" and she paused.
"Bless you, my lady, what's the odds so as you're happy," responded Ben, scratching his head, whilst a good-humoured smile mantled over his face; "but the real truth of the thing is, that the officers being a sort of privileged class, expect a cast of the chaplin's _wadee mecum_--that's the parson's Latin for prayer-book, Master Frank; but to my thinking a poor dev--that is, I means an onfortinate as sticks his spoon in the beckets for a full-due and loses the number of his mess, whilst sarving his country heart and soul--has rubbed out a multitude of sins whilst sponging his gun in the regard of dooty."
"I dearly love my country, Ben; I should be unworthy the name of Englishwoman if I did not," returned the lady with fervour, as in the course of conversation she endeavoured to overcome her depression; "but why fight at all?"
This query to one of Rodney's tars would have been quite sufficient, had the law been administered then as it is in the present day, to have subjected the questioner to a commission of lunacy; and Ben gave his mistress an earnest look, shading his eyes with his hand that he might not be deceived by the glare of the lights. At first he thought she was in joke, but finding from the unchangeableness of her countenance that she was serious, he replied--