The watch below, just waked from their sleep, are
all at breakfast; and Ropey, in one corner, is disconsolately
partaking of its delicacies. "Now, sailors newly waked are no
cherubs; and therefore not a word is spoken, everybody munching his
biscuit, grim and unshaven. At this juncture an affable-looking
scamp - Flash Jack - crosses the forecastle, tin can in hand, and seats
himself beside the land-lubber.
"Hard fare this, Ropey," he begins; "hard enough, too, for them that's
known better and lived in Lun'nun. I say now, Ropey, s'poaing you
were back to Holborn this morning, what would you have for breakfast,
eh?"
"Have for breakfast!" cried Ropey in a rapture. "Don't speak of it!"
"What ails that fellow?" here growled an old sea-bear, turning round
savagely.
"Oh, nothing, nothing," said Jack; and then, leaning over to Rope
Yarn, he bade him go on, but speak lower.
"Well, then," said he, in a smuggled tone, his eyes lighting up like
two lanterns, "well, then, I'd go to Mother Moll's that makes the
great muffins: I'd go there, you know, and cock my foot on the 'ob,
and call for a noggin o' somethink to begin with."
"What then, Ropey?"
"Why then, Flashy," continued the poor victim, unconsciously warming
with his theme: "why then, I'd draw my chair up and call for Betty,
the gal wot tends to customers.
