"£50?" said Nickelsen, looking up sharply. "What do you mean?"
Thor Smith rapped his glass, and said with mock solemnity:
"Our efforts in the cause of freedom having met with the success they deserve, we naturally look to you, as the intended victim, for reimbursement of all costs incurred in effecting your deliverance. And we hope after this you'll have the sense to know when you're well off, and not go running your head into a noose again, old man. Three cheers for Old Nick—hurrah!"
It was a festive evening, culminating in a song written specially for the occasion:
"Our dear Old Nick is a queer old stick,
And a bachelor gay was he,
Till the widow's charms occasioned alarms,
In the rest of the Company.
This will never do, said we,
We must settle affairs with she,
So we played for Old Nick, and we won the trick,
And a bachelor still is he—
Give it with three times three—
A bachelor gay, and we hope he may
Continue so to be!"
XVII
THE EVA MARIA
"Close on seven-and-thirty years now since I came aboard as skipper of the Eva Maria, and you can understand, Nils Petter, it's a bit queer like for me to be handing her over now to anyone else," said old Bernt Jorgensen solemnly. His brother, Nils Petter, listened respectfully.
"Never a thing gone wrong. I've always been able to reckon out exactly what the four trips to Scotland and Holland each summer brought in; but then, as you know, Nils Petter, I didn't go dangling about on shore with the other skippers, throwing money away on whisky and such-like trash."
"No, you've always been a steady one," said Nils Petter quietly.