"Not so hellfire unpoetical as all that, brother,' said Jack. 'Rowan came out with as fine a thing as ever I heard only this very morning, just before we rigged church. He and the second mate were looking at the six-pounders and he said "Oh ye mortal engines, whose rude throats/Th'im-mortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit." ' 'Capital, capital. I doubt if Shakespeare could have done much better,' said Stephen, nodding gravely. Of late he had noticed a very vicious tendency in these two young men, a tendency to indulge in bare-faced theft, each confident that the other's reading scarcely went beyond Robinson's Elements of Navigation."