Had he not been here for fifteen years doing this work which required skill and courage, piloting ships of all nations into and out of this dangerous channel? What was it to him (with a clinking glass), whether the conversation took the shape of the battle of Balaclava or the bombardment of Alexandria? Let the ships lay in the offing and await his pleasure. They were helpless without him, and must await his guidance to reach safe anchorage.
He scrambled over the side, and adjusting his monocle to look me over, said in an accent that would make a cockney cab-driver take to honest toil, "Ahem, ahem, where is your captain?"
"He is somewhere around the Equator in 145° west longitude," I said. "Ow, ow, I see. He abandoned the ship, I suppose."
"Yes," said I, "he left much against his will. It is rather strange, is it not?"
"Well, I'll be blowed to think he should have departed in this manner."
Riley, who was coiling down the main boom tackle fall, was more interested in the English pilot than in coiling ropes. The last remark of the pilot re-echoed back from him in words not befitting this high command.
"Shur'n it's more av them that ought to be laying at the bottom of the sea with a mill stone around their neck."
The way Riley's one eye would alternate from the pilot to the little town across the harbor, and the way his lips twitched suggested to me what was going on in his mind. To think he had sailed seventy-five hundred miles to find a specimen like this! "To hell with the pledge and Cannibal Isles, isn't the sight of this enough to drive any poor Irishman into swearing allegiance to John Barleycorn for the rest of his life?"