"Aye, aye, sir!" replied Jim.
But though the old man tried to have a flag-talk as he went by, the stranger made no response, the two men on her deck making no movement, much to his indignation.
"The infarnal son of a gun! Ain't he got the civility even to dip to the Stars-an'-stripes? Gaul bust my etarnal skin!"
"Kin yew read her name?" he sang out to the mate, who was ogling her stern with an ancient-looking ship's telescope.
"The Ocmulgee o' Nantucket, I make it, sir."
"Why, thet's ole Ebenezer Morgan's boat! Terant'lers, air they all asleep, er what? A goldarned, barnacle-backed South Seaman, an' he won't have a gam! Jeerusalem, but thet beats all my goin' to sea," growled Captain Bob Riley in tones half angry, half puzzled.
"Hyeh, yew boy," he went on, turning to Jim, "jump below an' ask the steward fur my gun. I'll poke his fire for him,[9] I'll wake up his oil-soaked intellec', I'll stir his blubber, or thar's no sech things as snakes an' pumpkins."
On Jim handing him the Winchester, he went to the break of the poop and let drive two or three shots through the rigging of the whaler.
As the sound of the report reached them and the whistle of the bullets went "Theu, theu!" overhead, the two men on the deck of the South Seaman jumped about six feet into the air, then rushed below and were seen no more.
"Seemed to scare 'em some, anyway," remarked the old man coolly, as he pumped another cartridge into the barrel.