Dick Burton, you’re a daddy! Polly’s been and got a baby for you, old boy! exclaimed several voices, as the said Dick mounted the side of the old Boreas, on the books of which ship he was rated as a quarter-master, he having just then returned from a pleasant little cutting-out expedition, where he had obtained, besides honour and glory, a gash on the cheek, a bullet through the shoulder, and a prong from a pike in the side. Me a what? he inquired, bending his head forward with a look of incredulity, and mechanically hitching up his trousers. Me a daddy? On course it’s a boy? Polly wouldn’t go for to get a girl, a poor little helpless girl, out in these outlandish parts.