“This is the snake’s toothbrush, and no mistake!” declared Fred, in disgust. “I wouldn’t feed the pigs such stuff as this.”
The boys sampled the food, drank a little of the coffee, and then left the table, several of the hands sneering at them and looking anything but friendly. These hands had bottles of liquor which were passed around freely. One offered his bottle to Jack, but the young major shook his head.
“Thank you, I don’t drink,” he said briefly.
“Don’t drink, eh?” sniffed the sailor. “Well, you don’t know what you miss.”
Slowly the evening wore away and the Hildegarde kept on her course. The fog was now lifting slowly, and with this came an increase in the wind, so that the craft made much better speed than before.
Jack had noted that the tall sailor named Ira Small did not associate much with the other hands. The fellow was a peculiar sort of individual, given to talking to himself and to rubbing his chin as if trying to refresh his memory over something.
“That fellow is a character,” whispered the young major to Ralph. “He doesn’t seem to belong to this bunch at all. I wonder how he got here.”
“Maybe they shanghaied him, just the way they shanghaied us, Jack.”