So that was what had happened to his mysterious predecessor! Well, it was an ill wind that blew nobody good, Anderton reflected. Poor beggar ... still he couldn’t help it ... and after all——
And it was a nice room—no denying that! Heaps of room for his things, he thought, remembering the little cramped half-deck of the “Araminta” which he had shared with five other apprentices three short months ago. The ship belonged to a period which had not yet learned the art of cutting down its accommodation to the very last possible inch. Her saloon was a grand affair, with a carved sideboard and panelling of bird’s-eye maple, and a skylight with stained glass in it, and all the rest of her fittings were to match. It looked as if he were going to be in clover!
A series of tremendous crashes, accompanied by the falling of a heavy body, broke in upon the steward’s remarks, and he started and looked round, his toothpick poised in mid-mouth.
“Coo!” he exclaimed. “’Ere comes our Mister Rumbold—and ain’t he pickled, too?... Not ’arf!”
He vanished discreetly into his pantry as the originator of the disturbance came ricochetting along the alleyway, finally bringing up against the door-jamb of Anderton’s room, where he came to a precarious stand.
He was a man on the shady side of middle age, with a nose which had once been aquiline and a sandy-white moustache yellowed with tobacco. The impression he gave—of a dissipated cockatoo—was heightened by the rumpled crest of stiff hair which protruded from beneath the shore-going straw hat which he wore halo-fashion, like a saint on the spree, pushed well back from his forehead.
“’Lo!” he observed with owl-like gravity. “You—comin’ shee long’f us?”
Anderton said he believed he was.
The mate reflected a minute and then said succinctly:
“Gorrelpyou!”