However, it came on to blow so bad, just off the pitch of the Horn, that the mate went down and dug the hoary old scoundrel out of his sweet slumbers, he having dared anybody to take a stitch off her before turning in. He cursed and he swore; but the end of it was that the watch laid aloft to reef the fore upper-topsail, and it was then that this Dago Tony, who was swanking it in the boots as usual, put his foot on a rotten ratline, and down he came, boots and all.
There was a lot of talk, and no wonder, about the things which had happened since Sandy MacGillivray got those boots from the Chink; and the Old Man getting wind of it, he told Sails to stitch up Tony boots and all, so as to stop the talk for good.
“Mind ye,” said the Old Man, “Ah dinna hold wi’ Papish suppersteetions, but there’s no denyin’ the sea’s a queer place.”
. . . . .
Nobody ever expected to see or hear any more of Sandy Mac’s boots. But there was a man in the starboard watch that nobody liked—a sort of soft-spoken, soft-handed chap we called Ikey Mo; because he was so fond of stowing away stuff in his chest every one thought he had a bit of the Jew in him.
The day we sighted the Fastnet this fellow showed up in a pair of sea-boots.
“Where had ye them boots, Ikey, and we rowling off the pitch of the Horn?” asked Larry when he saw them. “It’s a queer thing ye never wore them sooner.”
“If I’d wore ’em sooner,” says Ikey, “like as not you’d have borrowed the lend of ’em, an’ maybe got drowned in ’em,” he says, “and then where should I have been?”
“I would not,” says Larry. “I would not borrow the lend of the fill of a tooth from a dirty Sheeny like yourself. ’Tis my belief you took them boots off the poor dead corpse they belonged to; and by the same token, if they walk off with you to the same place he’s gone to, it’s no more than you deserve.”
The tale soon got round that Ikey had stolen the boots off the dead Dago, and it made a lot of feeling against him. But he only laughed and sneered when folks looked askance at him, and at last he left off making any secret of the thing he’d done.