"You don't chuck orange-peel my way, ma'am," said the mariner, and intended to clinch his assertion by spitting. But the sight of the carpet pulled him back to civilisation.
The friend of Demetrius, owner and captain of the Stormy Petrel, presented himself as a tall, small-boned man, with no superfluous flesh on his frame-work, and with a jaw as hard--from bullying underlings--and as blue--from close shaving--as were his eyes. The tint of these, added to the blackness of curling hair, combined with the racy vernacular which he flung fairly in her face, inclined Lady Jim to class him as an Irish-American. But from the discourteous way in which he spoke--as they never would have spoken in dear dirty Dublin--and from his habit of interjecting slang words chosen from the domestic speech of the Five Nations, she was puzzled to fix his nationality accurately. As a matter of private history, and this she discovered later, he was entirely cosmopolitan, and, out of sheer contrariety, owed allegiance to no particular flag. Not a bad-looking freebooter, Leah decided, with his regular features, and well-shaped head, and white teeth, and ruddy clean-shaven face; but dangerous, was her second and wiser thought. She was right. The man of many lands was also of many minds, but at the back of them all lay the unalterable determination to ride rough-shod over any one who would submit. As Lady Jim also held to the same theory of individualism, it was not unlikely that a brisk encounter might ensue, and for this she was quite prepared. Meantime, she decided that he was picturesque, and, in his rough blue clothes, with a red neck-tie and barbaric gold rings in his ears, and a general air of "you-be-damnedness," would have amused her as a new figure from the underworld, but that the large issues of the conversation induced seriousness.
"I don't understand you, and I am sure you do not understand me," was her observation, after digesting the orange-peel parable.
"Let it go at that, ma'am. But I reckon I kin make m'self as clear as any man, livin' or dead, when dollars are in th' pool. Now you"--he shook a large brown finger--"you, ma'am, give me taffy."
"What is taffy?"
"What you might call sugar--best brand, an' no sand in it, anyhow. I've struck heaps of the female in my time, and it's all taffy with them, till they annex the outfit, an' then y' kin go hang, I guess;" he fixed her with a true quarter-deck eye. "I surmise as you're tryin' t' play Sally Waters low down. Not much--oh, no. I should smile considerable to think as any gilded female got th' bulge on me. Go slow, ma'am. Make no haste when the fat's afire, ses Isaiah. Beckon he knew things, did thet prophet."
Leah smiled again at this Wild West outburst. "You are a free child of nature, Captain Strange."
"Taffy agin. I'm a man, you bet, same along as your husband."
"I should think you and he would get on together extremely well," said Lady Jim, dryly. "But don't you think you could contrive to be a little less rude?"
"Why, bless y', this is civil fur me."