In the Kings Name | Page 2

another, Billy!" cried the young man, or boy--for he was on the debatable ground of eighteen, when one may be either boy or man, according to one's acts, deeds, or exploits, as it used to say in Carpenter's Spelling.
Hilary Leigh, from his appearance, partook more of the man than the boy, for, though his face was as smooth as a new-laid egg, he had well-cut, decisive-looking Saxon features, and one of those capital closely-fitting heads of hair that look as if they never needed cutting, but settle round ears and forehead in not too tight clustering curls.
"Here's another, Billy," he cried; and a stoutly built sailor amidships cried, "Cheer ho, sir! Haul away, sir! Will it be a mess o' mick-a-ral for the lads to-day?"
"Don't know, Billy," was the reply, as the beautiful fish was hauled in, unhooked, a fresh lask or tongue of silvery bait put on, and the leaded line thrown over and allowed to run out fathoms astern once again.
Billy Waters, the gunner, went on with his task, rather a peculiar one, which would have been performed below in a larger vessel, but here the men pretty well lived on deck, caring little for the close stuffy quarters that formed the forecastle, where they had, being considered inferior beings, considerably less space than was apportioned to their two officers.
Billy's work was that of carefully binding or lashing round and round the great mass of hair hanging from the poll of a messmate, so as to form it into the orthodox pigtail of which the sailors of the day were excessively vain. The tail in question was the finest in the cutter, and was exactly two feet six inches long, hanging down between the sailor's shoulders, when duly lashed up and tied, like a long handle used for lifting off the top of his skull.
But, alas for the vanity of human nature! Tom Tully, owner of the longest tail in the cutter, and the envy of all his messmates, was not happy. He was ambitious; and where a man is ambitious there is but little true bliss. He wanted "that 'ere tail" to be half a fathom long, and though it was duly measured every week "that 'ere tail" refused to grow another inch.
Billy Waters had a fine tail, but his was only, to use his own words, "two foot one," but it was "half as thick agen as Tom Tully's," so he did not mind. In fact the first glance at the gunner's round good-humoured face told that there was neither envy nor ambition there. Give him enough to eat, his daily portion of cold water grog, and his 'bacco, and, again to use his own words, he "wouldn't change berths with the king hissen."
"Easy there, Billy messmet," growled Tom Tully; "avast hauling quite so hard. My tail ain't the cable."
"Why, you don't call that 'ere hauling, Tommy lad, do you?"
"'Nuff to take a fellow's head off," growled the other, just as the midshipman pulled in another mackerel, and directly after another, and another, for they were sailing through a shoal, and the man at the helm let his stolid face break up into a broad grin as the chance of a mess of mackerel for the men's dinner began to increase.
"Singing down deny, down deny, down deny down, Sing--"
"Easy, messmet, d'yer hear," growled Tom Tully, straining his head round to look appealingly at the operator on his tail. "Why don't yer leave off singing till you've done?"
"Just you lay that there nose o' your'n straight amidships," cried Billy, using the tail as if it was a tiller, and steering the sailor's head into the proper position. "I can't work without I sing."
"For this I can tell, that nought will be well, Till the king enjoys his own again."
He trolled out these words in a pleasant tenor voice, and was just drawing in breath to continue the rattling cavalier ballad when the young officer swung his right leg in board, and, sitting astride the low bulwark, exclaimed--
"I say, Billy, are you mad?"
"Mad, sir? not that I knows on, why?"
"For singing a disloyal song like that. You'll be yard-armed, young fellow, if you don't mind."
"What, for singing about the king?"
"Yes; if you get singing about a king over the water, my lad. That's an old song; but some people would think you meant the Pretend--Hallo! look there. You look out there forward, why didn't you hail? Hi! here fetch me a glass. Catch hold of that line, Billy. She's running for Shoreham, as sure as a gun. No: all right; let go."
He threw the line to the gunner just as a mackerel made a snatch at the bait, and before the sailor could catch it, away went the end astern, when the man at the helm made a