"So it is," continued another, whose weather-beaten body was supported
on a pair of wooden legs, and who had just joined the little party of
which Robin made one; "so it is, Jack, and what I call English, worth
ten books full of other lingo; wasn't I with him in Fifty-three, when,
with only twelve vessels, he beat Van Tromp, who had seventy ships of
the line and three hundred merchantmen under convoy? and hadn't the
Triumph seven hundred shot in her hull? Well, though it was there I lost
my precious limbs, I don't grudge them, not I: it's as well to go to the
fish as to the worms, and any how we have the king's pension."
"Jemmy," said a waggish-looking sailor, with only one eye and half an
arm, twirling some tobacco in his mouth at the same time--"Jemmy, it's
rum talking about royalty--you forget----"
"It's no such thing as rum talking, Terry; I don't mind who governs
England--she's England still. It warms my blood, too, to think of the
respect paid the Union Jack by all nations. When our admiral, God bless
him! was in the road of Cadiz, a Dutch fellow didn't dare to hoist his
flag; so, ye see, the Dutch knows what's what, though both men and ships
are heavy sailors."
"Yes," chimed in the first speaker, "that was the time when his health
was drunk with a salute of five guns by one of the French commanders:
and it's noble, so it is, to see the order he keeps those Algerines in.
Why, if in searching the Sallee rovers they found an English prisoner
aboard, they sent him off to Blake as civil as possible, hoping to get
favour. But that didn't hinder him from peppering both the Dey of
Algiers, and the infidel rascal at Tunis."
"I hear that the burning of the Spanish ships in the Road of Santa Cruz
was the most wonderful thing ever done," observed he of the wooden legs;
"and it's desperate bad news that he's taken on for sickness; for sure
am I, that the Protector will never have so faithful a friend, or so
good a servant. And so I told the sergeant, or whatever you choose to
call him, of the Ironsides, who stopped at the Oliver's Head, down below
yesterday, to bait horses, or some such thing:--says I, 'If Blake goes,
let your master look to himself.'--But I hate all soldiers--lubberly,
sulky, black-looking fellows--no spirit in them, particularly now, when
it's the fashion not to drink, or swear, or do any thing for
divarsion--ugh!" And the old man's ire against the "land-lubbers" grew
so hot, that he turned away, and stumped stoutly down the hill. Robin
was not tardy in following, nor long in getting into conversation,
though the remembrance of the "land lubbers" still rankled in the old
man's mind.