“We shall never do any good upon the ocean until we have hanged the dockyard contractors,” he cried. “I’d have a dead dockyard contractor as a figure-head for every first-rate in the fleet, and a provision dealer for every frigate. I know them with their puttied seams and their devil bolts, risking five hundred lives that they may steal a few pounds’ worth of copper. What became of the Chance, and of the Martin, and of the Orestes? They foundered at sea, and were never heard of more, and I say that the crews of them were murdered men.”
Lord Cochrane seemed to be expressing the views of all, for a murmur of assent, with a mutter of hearty, deep-sea curses, ran round the circle.
“Those rascals over yonder manage things better,” said an old one-eyed captain, with the blue-and-white riband f
