"Bravo, John Bird, well said! That's a clinker for you, Harvey," chimed in the devoted supporter of the previous speaker. "Fine Britishers they are, givin' away the country of their birth in lumps at a time!"
Harvey was purple; his blood was at boiling pitch, and his poignant attack on Captain John Bird gave that gentleman some concern lest it should reach to something more than mere words. His peroration consisted of a luxuriant use of imprecating adjectives which stamped him as a person of original thought. He apologized to his Creator as he passed from point to point of these profane heights, and was obviously sure that this chaste mode of seeking forgiveness commended his observations to the Deity. The attack on Gladstone's and his own patriotism roused him to produce prodigies of declamatory illustrations.
"Givin' the country away," he said. "Gladstone's trying to stop them dukes and earls and such like from stealing it. What does he say that the House of Lords should be shut up for, and these gentry made to work like other folk? I'll tell you what he says that for: because he wants it fairly shared, and the men that go down to the sea in ships to have a bit of it."
"Now you needn't repeat Scripture after you've been swearin' see hard," interposed Captain Cowan.
"No, sir, I'm not using Scripture. I'm saying that Gladstone wants to turn them fellows in the House of Lords out to work for their living, instead of cribbing all the land and gettin' such as you to back them up and crawl on your bended knees and kiss their hands for them; but I'm not one of them sort. I says what Joe Cowan says: 'The land for the people if they pay for it.' Wasn't it Gladstone and Bright that said no good would ever be done until the House of Lords was pulled down, and wasn't it Joe Cowan that stood up for them when they wanted to make the Queen the Empress of India? Didn't he say: 'No, gentlemen, the Queen of England's good enough for me; I wants no Empress'? And didn't that favourite Jew of yours say to him it was a grand speech? But I'm not goin' to open my mouth to fill your empty heads. You don't know your A B C's yet; and you talk to me about givin' away England, and about Dizzy, and you haven't a good word to say about your own countrymen who want to get you a bit of the land to grow something on. I tell you, you're nothing better than nincompoops, hobbledehoys that knows no more about politics than the old hookers you're skippers of do." He emphasized these last remarks by bringing his fist heavily down on the table, knocking the glasses off, and then in a patronizing way he walked from them a short distance, turned round quickly as though a sudden impulse had seized him, and shouted at the top of his voice:
"You want to go to school again, if you've ever been there, but I don't think you have!"
A reticent man sat close by during the singular debate. An observer could see that Captain Harvey's last oration was having a convincing effect on him, and immediately Harvey had fired his last shot Captain George Halligay rose, and with unaffected solemnity remarked:
"That man knows too much to be a shipmaster. He should be in the House of Commons. The language he uses, and his knowledge of men and what they say, is very clever. It would take a funny 'un to tackle him. They tell me he's written to the papers sometimes."
"All wind and blather," said Captain John Bird, which remark was endorsed by Captain Cowan and received with some applause.
"Not so," said Halligay. "He has great gifts." And then they made their way to the landing where their boats waited to convey them to their respective ships.