“But are you sure of all this, Bill?” said Mr Staines. “Because, if he should turn out to be somebody, I’ll make him pay me for my traps; that’s as certain now as that he’ll be sent to Old Davy.”
“Certain sure. He showed the doctor papers enough to set up a lawyer’s shop. But that’s not the best of it—hum—ha! Do you think, Mr Pigtop, that Mr Rattlin’s caulking?” (i.e., asleep).
“He has not moved these three hours. I owe Rattlin one for bringing this blackguard on board. There may be something in this, after all. He claimed Rattlin as his brother at the gangway, or something of the sort. Now, that makes me comfortable. It will take our proud messmate down a peg or two, I’m calculating—with his smooth face, and his little bits of Latin and Greek, and his parleyvooing. Oh, oh! but it’s as good as a bottle of rum to me. With all his dollars, and his bills, and his airs, I never had a brother seized up at the gangway. And the captain and the officers once made such a fuss about him! Damn his smooth face!—I’ve a great mind to wake him, and hit him a wipe across the chaps. He knocked me down with the davit-block, for twitting him about that girl of his, that was drowned swimming after him. I’ll have satisfaction for that. The captain ordered me to leave the ship for being knocked down. Well—we shall see who’ll be ordered to leave the ship now. I never caused a girl’s death by desarting her. Upon my soul, I’ve a great mind to rouse him, and hit him a slap of the chaps. I hate smooth faces.”
“Well,” said Staines, “you may depend upon it Rattlin is asleep, or he would have wopped you, Pigtop, for your compliments.”
“He! I should very much like to see it—the spooney.”
“If Mr Rattlin is caulking,” said our valet-de-chambre, “there can’t be no harm done whatsomever. But they do say, in the sick-bay, as how Mr Rattlin isn’t himself, but that Joshua Daunton is he, and that he is nobody at all whatsomever; though Gibbons says, and he’s a cute one, that if Mr Rattlin is not Mr Rattlin, seeing as how Joshua Daunton is Mr Rattlin, Mr Rattlin must be somebody else—and as a secret, he told me, as like as not, he must be Joshua Daunton.”
“Well, here’s comfort again. If Mr Rattlin—Mr indeed!—turns out to be a swindler, as I’m sure he will, it wouldn’t be lawful, nor right, nor proper in me to pay him the money I owe him,” said the conscientious Mr Pigtop. “Damn his smooth face!—I should like to have the spoiling of it.”
Here was important information for me to ruminate upon. I was determined to remain still as long as I could gain any intelligence. But the conversation—if conversation we must term the gibberish of my associates—having taken another turn, I slowly lifted up my smooth face, and, confronting Mr Pigtop’s rough one, I said to him, very coolly, “Mr Pigtop, I am going to do what you would very much like to see—I am going to wop you.”
“Wop me!—no, no, it’s not come to that yet. I have heard something—I’ve a character to support—I must not demean myself.”
“There is my smooth face, right before you—I dare you to strike it—you dare not! Then, thus, base rascal, I beat you to the earth!” And Pigtop toppled down.