Anderton flung out of the room in a rage. By this time his first enthusiasm over his unexpected good fortune had received a decided check, and it was with distinctly mixed feelings that he made his way Poplar-wards to make personal acquaintance with his new ship.
What was the meaning behind all these dark hints? Was this mysterious “Altisidora” a tough ship—a hell-ship? Her skipper didn’t look like it, though, of course, one had heard of captains who had the Jekyll-and-Hyde touch about them—butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths ashore, but they turned into raging devils as soon as they were out of soundings. Anyhow, he was ready enough for such contingencies. He had been reckoned the best boxer in the ship as an apprentice, and he would rather welcome than otherwise an opportunity of displaying his prowess with his fists.... Was she perhaps a hungry ship? He reflected with a grin that he had received ample training in the art of tightening his belt in the old “Araminta.” ... Slow—well, a slow ship had her compensations in the way of a thumping pay-roll. He remembered the long faces the crew of his old ship had pulled when the dead horse was not out before she was on the Line.... Ah, well, he supposed he should know soon enough. One thing was certain, if she were the most unseaworthy tub in the world, he had no intention of turning back. His situation had been desperate enough to call for a desperate remedy.
There was some kind of a small disturbance—a street row of some sort—in progress just outside the dock gate, and, despite his impatience to see his new ship, Anderton stopped to see what was happening.
A queer little scarecrow of a man was standing in the roadway, shaking his clenched fists in denunciation towards the soaring spars of a lofty clipper, whose poles, rising above the roofs of the warehouses, seemed to stab the sunset sky.
“Oh, ye beauty! Oh, ye murdhering bitch!” he shouted. “Lovely ye look, don’t ye? Who’d think to see ye that ye had it in ye to kill the bes’ shipmate ever a man had?”
A passing policeman, thumbs in belt, casting a kindly Olympian eye on the little man, tapped him on the shoulder.
“All right—all right now—move on! Never mind about that now, Johnny! Can’t do with you making your bother ’ere!”
The little man whirled round on him furiously.
“Johnny! Johnny is it? Isn’t it Johnny I’m talkin’ about, the bes’ shipmate ever a man had—smashed like a rotten apple, and no cause at all for him to fall—oh, ye villain—oh, ye——”
Olympus grew slightly impatient.