elsewhere. But to the navigation of the ship, to daily routine and the
maintenance of that exact discipline on which the Navy prided itself,
they were as essential as is milk to the making of cheese. Nothing
could be done without them. Decent language was thrown away upon a set
of fellows who had been bred in that very shambles of language, the
merchant marine. To them "'twas just all the same as High Dutch." They
neither understood it nor appreciated its force. But a volley of
thumping oaths, bellowed at them from the brazen throat of a
speaking-trumpet, and freely interlarded with adjectives expressive of
the foulness of their persons, and the ultimate state and destination
of their eyes and limbs, saved the situation and sometimes the ship.
Officers addicted to this necessary flow of language were sensible of
only one restraint. Visiting parties caused them embarrassment, and
when this was the case they fell back upon the tactics of the
commander who, unable to express himself with his usual fluency
because of the presence of ladies on the quarter-deck, hailed the
foreyard-arm in some such terms as these: "Foreyard-arm there! God
bless you! God bless you! God bless you! _You know what I mean!_"

Hard words break no bones, and to quarter-deck language, as such, the
sailor entertained no rooted objection. What he did object to, and
object to with all the dogged insistence of his nature, was the fact
that this habitual flow of profane scurrility was only the prelude to
what, with grim pleasantry, he was accustomed to describe as "serving
out slops." Anything intended to cover his back was "slops" to the
sailor, and the punishments meted out to him covered him like a
garment.

The old code of naval laws, the _Monumenta Juridica_ or _Black
Book_ of the Admiralty, contained many curious disciplinary