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 when he sobered, he had quite forgotten where the leg was, and how he broke it; he therefore got Kelson to splice the stump with the butt-end of a mop; but in the hurry it had been left three inches too long, so that he had to jerk himself up to the top of his peg at every step.  The doctor, glad to breathe the fresh air after the horrible work he had gone through, was leaning over the side, speaking to Kelson.  When I fell, he turned round and drew Cookee’s fire on himself.  “Doctor, you have not prescribed for me yet.”—­“No, Caboose, I have not; what is wrong?”—­“Wrong, sir! why, I have lost my leg, and the captain’s clerk says I am not in the return!—­Look here, sir, had doctor Kelson not coopered me, where should I have been?—­Why, doctor, had I been looked after, amputation might have been unnecessary; a fish might have done, whereas I have had to be spliced.”  He was here cut short by the voice of his mate, who had gone forward to slay a pig for the gunroom mess.  “Oh, Lad, oh!—­Massa Caboose!—­Dem dam Yankee!  De Purser killed, massa!—­Dem shoot him troo de head!—­Oh, Oh, Lad!” Captain Deadeye had come on deck.  “You, Johncrow, what is wrong with you?”—­“Why, de Purser killed, captain, dat all.”—­“Purser killed?—­Doctor, is Saveall hurt?” Treenail could stand it no longer.  “No, sir, no; it is one of the gunroom pigs that we shipped at Halifax, three cruises ago; I am sure I don’t know how he survived one, but the seamen took a fancy to him, and nicknamed him the Purser.  You know, sir, they make pets of any thing, and every thing, at a pinch!”