‘Nay,’ answered the dwarf, ‘I came on board to help you out of a scrape. You are discourteous, so get you to sea as you best can.’
‘Well, well!’ replied Captain Jem, ‘I was in the wrong; but tell us frankly, man, what you are, and how you come to live amongst these accursed shoals?’
‘What I will do for you is this,’ quoth the dwarf—‘and I will do neither more nor less; I will pilot your ship out to sea, and I will ask nothing for it, but that you make me rid of you without loss of time.’
‘Why,’ quoth I, ‘you must be very fond of solitude to propose anything of the sort; and if you obstinately refuse to tell us what you are, or what you do here, how can we trust the ship and all our lives to your management?’
‘You will have me on board,’ said the dwarf, ‘and I give you free leave to hang me up by the neck, not by the breech, if I as much as scrape a barnacle from the bottom of the schooner.
This proposition certainly looked reasonable.
‘What will you do, when we get to sea?’ asked Bristol Tom.
‘What is that to you, old man?’ quoth the dwarf; ‘go your ways, and leave me to go mine. I warrant I should have had more wit than to come blundering in here against my will.’
‘So you landed here on purpose?’ says I.
‘Whether I did or no,’ says the dwarf, ‘is nothing to you. Do you want a pilot, or do you not?’