“I vote that we make her our valet de chambre,” said the Dude, who had arrived at Nuka Hiva six months before with a bullet-hole in his coat-tails.
“What!” ejaculated twenty deep bass voices.
“I reckon you wants to send the lot of us to hell,” said another, who spat through the port-hole with wonderful precision and disgust as he continued: “What would old Benbow say if he heard we’d had his daughter down here, with coves like us?”
“Why, bless me soul,” said another, as he swiftly spat and crossed his comrade’s last stream of tobacco juice on its way through the port-hole, “Benbow would say that one of us” (here he lowered his voice and looked in the direction of Waylao’s chamber) “was the father of the kid. Where’d be the sprees when Benbow returned from his next voyage? No more rum, I’ll bet, eh?”
“You’re about right, I reckon,” murmured the young sailors who were busy in the corner making tobacco-pouches out of the tough skin of an albatross’s feet.
The Dude from the London Stock Exchange said: “What a fuss to make over a girl being in the family way.” Then he went on carefully cutting out a new pair of paper cuffs, which he always wore to impress the skippers of the outgoing schooners, who might give him a passage to the “no-extradition” colonies of South America—on tick.
Bill Grimes put his spoke in and capped the lot. Looking up at the rows of grim faces, he gave a little embarrassed cough, then said: “It’s my way of finking that the gal oughter git married to some ’onourable cove who would look after ’er, make ’er ’appy.” Rubbing his scrubby chin fiercely, he continued: “Gawd! ain’t she ’andsome!”
As he hitched his checked trousers up, Uncle Sam and all the other rough scoundrels turned their heads and stared at him in perfect silence for about three minutes—a silence that spoke more than a thousand words.
Grimes met the steadfast gaze with a glance of defiance. Chinese Billy (a bilious-looking Scotsman) said: “Weel, I didna ken to live to sae this day, Bill Grames; here’s sax-pence, get ye ashore, ha’e a whuskey. Ye’ll ne’er earyn the price o’ a shave for that ugly mug, let alane enough to keep a bonny lass like her!”
At this moment Uncle Sam nudged the man who was just clearing his throat, with delight, to make a speech, for he had once been a stump socialistic lecturer. God knows what he was about to say; but I don’t think much golden wisdom was lost through that interruption.