Vetch, on the contrary, was what the Scriptures call a “continual dropping.”  He kept himself apart, sulking the livelong day, scarce ever speaking, and when he did speak using a tone which the Grand Turk might employ towards a beggar.  It was true enough that the prisoners were inferior to him in quality, but, their lot and circumstances being the same, it was decidedly a mistake to make the others feel their inferiority, and, as I think, a mark of ill breeding to boot.  His few words were sneers, and he had a contemptuous way of looking at a man that made one itch to thrash him.  At length he was thrashed, and very smartly, by a man in our dormitory, and after that he was utterly ignored, by general consent.  It happened in this wise.

One bleak day of mud and rain, when we were driven by the weather out of the courtyard into the lower rooms of the barracks, and were sitting in doleful dumps, at a loss how to pass the time, Joe Punchard cried out of a sudden: 

“Come, souls, what’s a spell of foul weather to men that have sailed the salt seas!  Haul forward your stools, mates, and we’ll have a concert and make all snug.  I warrant some of you can troll a ditty, though ye be too modest to own it; and not being plagued wi’ modesty myself, I’ll heave anchor first.”

I knew, nothing of Joe’s musical powers, and it was with no little surprise I discovered that he had an excellent voice of the pitch they call barytone.  He began: 

Of all the lives, I ever say,
A pirate’s be for I;
Hap what hap may he’s allus gay
And drinks an’ bungs his eye. 
For his work he’s never loath;
An’ a-pleasurin’ he will go;
Tho’ sartin sure to be popt off,
Yo ho, with the rum below.

At the conclusion of the stanza his audience broke into loud applause.  And then, with a sheepish air that set me a-smiling, Joseph Runnles, my bedfellow, the little silent man of whom I have spoken, drew out of his pocket the parts of a flute, and putting them together, set it to his lips and accompanied Joe through the next stanza, picking up the tune with a facility that spoke well for his musical ear.

In Bristowe I left Poll ashore,
Well stored wi’ togs and gold;
An’ off I goes to sea for more,
A-piratin’ so bold. 
An’ wounded in the arm I got,
An’ then a pretty blow;
Comes home I finds Poll flowed away. 
Yo ho, with the rum below.

“Adad, brother,” cries Joe, clapping the little man on the shoulder, “why have you stowed away your noble talents so long under hatches?  I’ve sailed the seas for many a year; east, west, north and south, as the saying is; Blacks, Indians, Moors, Morattos, and Sepoys; but smite my timbers, never such a man of music have I drawn alongside of before.”

Runnles blushed like a girl, and said never a word, but blew the moisture out of his flute, ready for the next stanza.

An’ when my precious leg was lopt. 
Just for a bit of fun,
I picks it up, on t’other hopt,
An’ rammed it in a gun. 
“What’s that for?” cries out Salem Dick. 
“What for, my jumpin’ beau? 
Why, to give the lubbers one more kick!”
Yo ho with the rum below.