"Purser's Steward!" cried Grummet, one of the quarter-gunners,
slowly shifting his quid from one cheek to the other, like a
ballast-stone, "I won't bid on that 'ere bunch of old swabs,
unless you put up ten pounds of soap with it."

"Don't mind that old fellow," said the auctioneer. "How much for
the jacket, my noble tars?"

"Jacket;" cried a dandy _bone polisher_ of the gun-room. "The
sail-maker was the tailor, then. How many fathoms of canvas in
it, Purser's Steward?"

"How much for this _jacket_?" reiterated the auctioneer, emphatically.

"_Jacket_, do you call it!" cried a captain of the hold.

"Why not call it a white-washed man-of-war schooner? Look at the
port-holes, to let in the air of cold nights."

"A reg'lar herring-net," chimed in Grummet.

"Gives me the _fever nagur_ to look at it," echoed a mizzen-top-man.

"Silence!" cried the auctioneer. "Start it now--start it, boys;
anything you please, my fine fellows! it _must_ be sold. Come,
what ought I to have on it, now?"

"Why, Purser's Steward," cried a waister, "you ought to have new
sleeves, a new lining, and a new body on it, afore you try to
shove it off on a greenhorn."