CHAPTER XIV.
A DRAUGHT IN A MAN-OF-WAR.
We were not many days out of port, when a rumour was set afloat that dreadfully alarmed many tars.

It was this: that, owing to some unprecedented oversight in the Purser, or some equally unprecedented remissness in the Naval-storekeeper at Callao, the frigate's supply of that delectable beverage, called "grog," was well-nigh expended.
In the American Navy, the law allows one gill of spirits per day to every seaman.

In two portions, it is served out just previous to breakfast and dinner.

At the roll of the drum, the sailors assemble round a large tub, or cask, filled with liquid; and, as their names are called off by a midshipman, they step up and regale themselves from a little tin measure called a "tot." No high-liver helping himself to Tokay off a well-polished sideboard, smacks his lips with more mighty satisfaction than the sailor does over this _tot_.

To many of them, indeed, the thought of their daily _tots_ forms a perpetual perspective of ravishing landscapes, indefinitely receding in the distance.