BIMBO
It’s enough to make a man give up his calling! (He throws himself into a chair.) Why, if I could ha’ known beforehand how many cargoes would prove just salt fish and spoilt grain, do you think I’d ever gone for this way of business?
THE GUNNER (vehemently)
No! And neither would any young man that could find another opening for himself.
BIMBO
If a youth came to me now for guidance, asking my advice whether or no to take up this calling, I’d bid him think it over, I would. In the first place: How many have the right gift for it? In the second, not one in a thousand has the patience; and in the third, not one in ten thousand has the gimp to persevere over the discouragements. The youth, all confidence and ignorance, thinks he has only to get him some brisk companions and take rich treasure ships——
THE GUNNER (with a gloomy laugh)
Aye, so I thought when I was new at it.
BIMBO
Fish! Seven cargoes o’ salt fish! Seven! And now, when we’ve been struggling on and wearing ourselves out to improve our conditions and lay by a little something except salt fish for our old age, all we get to reward us is spoilt grain, bad rum, tobacco not fit to smoke, and molasses full of dead bugs!
THE GUNNER (hotly)
Yes; and if I had my way, somebody’d suffer for ’t!
(He makes a menacing gesture toward the three captives, who are grouped together upon the right. Robert sitting despondently, his elbows on his hands; Lydia drooping unhappily in her chair; and Driscoll standing in an attitude of sturdy defiance. But at this sinister speech of the Gunner, and his equally ominous gesture, Lydia cries out faintly and begins to weep again.)
DRISCOLL (sternly)
Quiet, Lydia. Let these villains not believe they fright us!
LYDIA (plaintively)
Let them not believe they fright us? Don’t you see what they intend, Father?
(She glances at the brazier, shuddering.)
DRISCOLL
Be quiet.
LYDIA
Look yonder! (Rising, she points to the brazier.) Look yonder! That is for me. (Driscoll looks at the brazier incredulously.) Don’t you understand? That is for me! He said it was for me!