The dwarf waved his hand very impatiently, as who should say, a truce with your idle jeers, and then quoth he very solemnly—‘I am a pilot.’
At this we all listened greedily enough.
‘Well,’ says Captain Jem, ‘I can’t say that we are not in want of one. But whereabouts may we be? Is there land nigh; and what do you call these rocks and sands?’
‘There is no land that I know of nigher than New Providence,’ answered the dwarf, ‘and it lies a good hundred leagues to the westward and southward; and as for these rocks and sands, I cannot tell you their name, because they have got none.’
‘Then what ships come hither that you act as pilot for?’ asked I.
‘None at all,’ replied the little man, very briskly. ‘There is nothing to take ships hither, unless it be a few turtle, and these they can get in far less dangerous places.’
At this we all stared at each other, and the men murmured that the dwarf was mad; and Bristol Tom whispered that mayhap the creature had been marooned—that is, deserted—upon these rocks, and that he had lost his reason. After a short pause, however, the dwarf-pilot resumed his discourse.
‘There never was a ship,’ quoth he, ‘which came to these shoals but stayed there. There be plenty of room for a navy to lie on these sands and reefs, and then the first gale of wind that comes, smashes them faster than e’er a ship-breaker in Limehouse.’
Captain Jem now began to lose patience, so he cried very wrathfully.
‘If you talk more riddles to us, little man, God smite me! but I will run you up to the yard-arm by the breech of your galligaskins, and so dip you into the brine, as men serve a mangy monkey!’