“And ’oo’s ’e?” truculently demanded Mr. Tridge. “What’s ’e got to say against us? Why, I’ll take my oath I ain’t ever even ’eard of ’im before!”
“It ain’t a ’im,” explained the skipper. “It’s a bit of clarsical learning I’ve picked up in Latin, and it means ‘the game’s up.’ Boys, prepare for the worst!”
“Which of us?” asked Mr. Horace Dobb, not without apprehension.
“All of us!” replied the skipper. “Our owner’s giving up business, and ’e’s goin to sell all ’is ships!”
Again there was a hush, and then, from the hinder spaces of this period of shock, there crept forth the voice of Mr. Horace Dobb, the cook, attuned to a sweet reasonableness.
“We’ll be all right,” he contended. “Just as if anybody would ever buy the old ‘Jane Gladys’!”
“Except,” slowly said Mr. Clark, “to break ’er up!”
As some ill-omened sound in the still watches of the night may paralyze its hearers into a cold, suffocating inaction, so did the grisly words of Mr. Clark bring his companions to silent, wide-eyed consternation. The debonair Mr. Peter Lock was the first to recover, but, though he roundly stigmatized Mr. Clark as being a gloomy old horror, there was no elasticity in his tone, and his effort to exhibit unconcern by lighting a cigarette was marred by the manifest shaking of his fingers.
“Well, there it is, boys,” presently said the skipper, with an unconvincing attempt at briskness. “It’s as much a surprise to me as it is to you. For myself, I shan’t go to sea again after the next trip. The owner’s fixing me up a bit of a pension. And as for you chaps well, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll start looking round for fresh jobs without delay.”
“And they’ll take some finding,” stated Mr. Horace Dobb. “’Oo is likely to engage us off the ‘Jane Gladys’ I’d like to know?” he asked the skipper, with some indignation.