“It’s all I want of it for a bit, any way,” Rowsell muttered, pushing his way along the quay. “If there’s any of you for a drink, I’m your man. What-ho, Nichols?—Lethbridge?”
Lethbridge muttered something and turned away. Nichols, too, declined.
“I am not sure, Job Rowsell,” the latter declared, “that I like your money nor the way you earn it.”
Job Rowsell stopped for a minute. There was an ugly look in his sullen face.
“If you weren’t my own bother-in-law, Matthew Nichols,” he said, “I’d shove those words down your throat.”
“And if you weren’t my sister’s husband,” Nichols retorted, turning away, “I’d take a little trip over to Penzance and say a few words at the Police Station there.”
Granet laughed good-humouredly.
“You fellows don’t need to get bad-tempered with one another,” he observed. “Look here, I shall have three days here. I’ll take one of you each day—make a fair thing of it, eh? You to-morrow, Nichols, and you the next day Lethbridge. I’m not particular about the weather, as Job Rowsell can tell you, and I’ve sailed a boat since I was a boy. I’m no land-lubber, am I, Rowsell?”
“No, you can sail the boat all right,” Rowsell admitted, looking back over his shoulder. “You’d sail it into Hell itself, if one’d let you. Come on, you boys, if there’s any one of you as fancies to drink. I’m wet to the skin.”
Nichols’ boat was duly prepared at nine o’clock on the following morning. Lethbridge shouted to him from the rails.