"Ah! Still beating that dead horse."
"Steady as she goes, Judah! You know how much you can say to me—don't exceed! Ah, at that I might've persuaded him, seeing how sweet he come aboard of us here for a gossip with old Shawn, and was telling some of his boy's troubles but not all, not all, and believing everything old Shawn was a-mind to tell him over the little drinks, and the fish stink, why, he wasn't minding it, and the lantern light winking on the pretty face of him——"
"Shit, you're drunk."
"Drunk on sea water, Judah, you with your leather heart, you wouldn't know. He might'a' come along of his own will, now that's no lie. He was halfway so minded. He did believe I'd been given command, for a quick fishing trip to the Banks and so home—I think he did. But there'd have been much to explain later, and the devil with all explaining, the drop of opium didn't go amiss and will do him no hurt.... Judah, you fool, don't you know he saw you there at the Lion—and you that clumsy, and giving him your dead-window look, the way you might as well have written a letter to their Select Watch, that you might."
"What if he did? The others is bought and paid for."
"You'll run me no such errand again, Judah—nor wouldn't've then, had not my voice told me there was need. Mother of God, to think I may have misheard, and a man died for nothing! But it can't be so."
"Voice?"
"You wouldn't know. How many times did you strike?"
"I don't know."
"I do. Thirteen. And he didn't die till morning. He lived to speak."