The word had been passed to get six of the larboard guns and all the
shot over to the other side, to give the brig a list of a streak or
two a-starboard, so that the stage on which the carpenter and his crew
were at work over the side, stopping the shot holes above the water
line, might swing clear of the wash of the sea. I had jumped from
the nettings, where I was perched, to assist in unbolting one of the
carronade slides, when I slipped and capsized against a peg sticking
out of one of the scuppers. I took it for something else and damned
the ring-bolt incontinently. Caboose, the cook, was passing with his
mate, a Jamaica negro of the name of Johncrow, at the time. "Don't
damn 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, &c., look forward to the cookdom, as the cardinals
look to the popedom; and really there is some analogy between them,
for neither is preferred from any especial fitness for the office.
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