"You have, I suppose?" sneered Cai.
"Heaps."
"Very well; let's have a sample. . . . You won't find it on the mantelpiece," for 'Bias had turned about and was picking up his pipe again with great deliberation.
"I've no wish to hurt your feelin's undooly," said he, eyeing the bowl for a moment and tapping out the ashes into his palm.
"Don't mind me!"
"But I do mind ye. . . . See here now, Cai," he resumed after a short pause, "we've known one another—let me see—how long?"
"Seventeen years, come the twenty-first of November next," quickly responded Cai, fumbling at the tobacco-jar. "In Rotterdam, if you'll remember—our vessels lyin' alongside. 'Hullo!' says you."
"Far as I remember, you asked me aboard."
"Yes. 'Hullo!' says you; 'that's a pretty-lookin' craft o' your'n.' 'She'll work in' an' out o' most places,' says I. 'Speedy too, I reckon,' says you, 'for a hard-wood ship; though a bit fine forra'd. A wet boat, I doubt?' 'Not a bit,' says I; 'that's a mistake strangers are apt to make about the Hannah Hoo. Like to step aboard an' cast a look over her fittin's? I can show ye something in the way of teak panels,' says I: and you came. That's how it began," wound up Cai, staring hard at the tobacco-jar, for—to tell the truth—a faint mist obscured his vision.
'Bias, too, was staring hard, down upon the hearth-rug between his feet.