“Boys, you’ve heard I’m a hard man to sail under. Maybe I am. That’s for you to find out. I won’t have back chat. I won’t stand for any sojering or shinaniking. If you’re decent sailormen, and know your work, and do it, we’ll get on all right. If you’re not, me and my mates are here to knock ruddy hell out of you.
“One word more. This man here”—he indicated the trembling form of Seattle Sam—“came on board my ship yesterday to sell you. I’ll give you his words. ‘I’ll fool ’em I’m goin’ to sign on myself, and they’ll come like lambs. Twenty dollars apiece and the men are yours. And I don’t care if you give ’em ruddy hell!’ Now I say to you, ‘This man’s yours! Take him, and I wish you joy of your shipmate!’”
And, grasping Seattle Sam by the collar of his coat and the scruff of his pants, he propelled him to the top of the poop ladder and gave him a skilful hoist which dropped him full in the midst of the expectant group below.
. . . . .
The tug’s smoke was a grey feather on the skyline; Flattery a grey cloud on the port bow.
The song of the wind in his royals was sweet music in Captain Bascomb’s ears. So was the rush and gurgle of the waves under the clipper’s keel. So were all the little noises that a ship makes in a seaway.
But, oh, sweeter far than them all was a confused turmoil which ever and anon came vaguely to his hearing—a sound made up of thuds, of cries, of curses—which indicated beyond the shadow of a doubt that Mr. Samuel Grover, some time of ’Frisco, and late of Cormorant Street, Victoria, was undergoing the decidedly painful process of being ground exceeding small!