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.
A cardinal is made pope because he is old, infirm, and imbecile--our
friend Caboose was made cook because he had been Lord Nelson's
coxswain, was a drunken rascal, and had a wooden leg; for, as to his
gastronomical qualifications, he knew no more of the science than just
sufficient to watch the copper where the salt junk and potatoes were
boiling. Having been a little in the wind overnight, he had quartered
himself, in the superabundance of his heroism, at a gun where he
had no business to be, and in running it out, he had jammed his toe
in a scupper hole, so fast that there was no extricating him; and
notwithstanding his piteous entreaty "to be eased out handsomely, as
the leg was made out of a plank of the Victory, and the ring at the
end out of one of her bolts," the captain of the gun finding, after a
stout pull, that the man was like to come "home in his hand _without_
the leg," was forced "to break him short off," as he phrased it, to
get him out of the way, and let the carriage traverse. In the morning