The Dutchman took an oaken belaying-pin from the rack around the mizzenmast, held it out toward Bones and the others and calmly broke it in two with his bare hands and tossed the fragments overside.
"Admirable!" exclaimed my great-uncle. "What words could hope to express so much as that gesture? And it intrigues me to note that Corlaer has a distinct taste for the dramatic. I trust that you are recovering from the seasickness, friend Peter?"
"I get well, ja," answered Peter.
"Then perhaps you will come below and join me at breakfast?"
Peter looked unhappy—he loved his food, did Peter.
"Neen," he said simply. "If I eat, I get sick."
"You have my sympathy," replied my great-uncle with unfailing courtesy. "I advise a modest diet for a day or two, with an occasional dram of liquor to warm the stomach, and then I prophesy you will become as good a sailor as any of us. You, Robert, I perceive to have made yourself instantly at home upon the strange element. That is excellent. You shall yet prove a credit to me. Do you feel sufficiently stimulated by your new experiences to partake of a second meal so early in the day?"
"I have just been hearing what became of the lawful crew of this vessel," I answered. "It left me no appetite for food."
"Regrettable," he returned sadly. "Life is a hard business, Robert, as you have yet to learn. Mercy is as often as not a mistaken policy, a vice as much as a virtue. Silver, has the lookout sighted any vessel?"
"Not a sail since we cleared Sandy Hook, sir," the one-legged man answered briskly.