“I never did that,” snapped Captain Kettle.
“Ah, one’s memory fails at times. I dare say also you forget a water famine when the condenser broke down, and a trifling affray with knuckledusters and other toys; and a dash of cholera; and nine dead bodies of Hadjis which went overboard? Perhaps, too, you don’t remember fudging a clean bill of health, and baksheeshing certain officials of his Shereefian Majesty?”
“No,” said Captain Kettle sourly, “I don’t remember.”
“I’m going to forget it also, if you’ll prove yourself a sensible man, and deal amicably with Mr. Shelf and myself. I’m also going to forget that when you were shipping rice for Calcutta in ’82 you rented mats you called your own to the consignor, and made a tidy penny out of that; and I shall similarly let slip from my memory a trifling squeeze of eight hundred dollars which you made out of a stevedore in New Orleans, before you let him touch your ship, in the fall of ’82.”
“You can’t make anything out of those,” said Kettle. “They’re the ordinary customs of the trade.”
“Shipmasters’ perquisites for which owners pay? Exactly. I know some skippers consider these trifles to be their lawful right. But a court of law might be ignorant enough to set them down as robbery.”
“I should like to know where you’ve got all these things from,” Captain Kettle demanded, facing Onslow, with his lean scraggy neck thrust forth nearly a foot from its stepping. “I should like to know, too, how you’re here? I’d a fancy you were dead.”
“Other people have labored under that impression. But I’ve an awkward knack of keeping alive. You’ve the same. The faculty may prove useful to us both in the course of the next month, if you’re not ass enough to refuse £500.”
“Ho! That’s the game we’ve got bent, is it? What old wind-jammer do you want me to lose now?”
“Sir!” thundered Shelf, lifting his voice for the first time. “This is pretty language. I would have you remember that but a short time ago you were in my employ.”