Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/110

 "Of course not—go on," chorused several voices.

"I had no idea," lisped a simple youth, who was one of a small party of young gentlemen interested in engineering and science, who had been accommodated with a passage,—"I had no idea that our cook was a poet as well as an admirable chef de cuisine."

"Oh, it's not our cook he means," explained the sporting electrician; "Mr. Smith refers to a certain sea-cook—or his son, I'm not sure which—who is chef des horse-marines."

"Is there a chorus?" asked one.

"Of course there is," replied Smith; "a sea-song without a chorus is like a kite without a tail—it is sure to fall flat, but the chorus is an old and well-known one—it is only the song that is new. Now then, clear your throats, gentlemen."

Twas on a Friday morning that I went off, An' shipped in the Nancy Lee, But that ship caught a cold and with one tremendous cough Went slap to the bottom of the sea, the sea, the sea— Went slap to the bottom of the sea.

—Then the raging sea may roar, An' the stormy winds may blow, While we jolly sailor boys rattle up aloft, And the landlubbers lie down below, below, below; And the landlubbers lie down below.