“If it goes on, we may get in to-morrow night?”
“Ay, if it doesn’t freshen into a gale, which the saints forbid! I mind not a gale in my teeth, but rocks before and the wind driving behind is what I mislike. Methinks, master,” he added, abruptly, “it will be well for you to get to your journey’s end.”
“I have a longer before me,” said Stephen, with a smile.
“Ay, to Exeter,” answered Andrew, misunderstanding, “and I have been thinking I would put you ashore at Teignmouth, and save you a piece of your journey. I might try Exmouth, but—there are ill tales of Exmouth, as I told you there were of Dartmouth,” he added, with a laugh; “at Dartmouth they know me, but at Exmouth—there might by chance be a mistake.”
Stephen thanked him heartily, saying, and truly, that the shortening of the road would be a great gain. They put in that night at a small harbour formed for the convenience of coasting vessels, but though their start was made with the first glimmer of dawn, Jakes, who generally had to be aroused by a rope’s end or a kick, had been on shore, and came back carrying a bag and grinning from ear to ear, so that Hugh was forced to ask him what he had got.
“Apples,” he said, still grinning; “rare fine apples. Bide a bit, and shalt have one.”
Hugh, who loved apples as well as any boy with a wholesome appetite should do, kept an eye on Jakes and his promise without suspecting that there might be anything unfriendly in this sudden change of disposition. The wind had freshened, of that there could be no doubt, and the sailors were busy with the lumbering sail, when Jakes beckoned Hugh forward to the bow, where was the bag.
“Put in thy hand and pull’m out, quick!” he said, running back to his work; and, thinking no harm, Hugh thrust in boldly, to have his fingers instantly seized in a nip which made him feel as if by the next moment they would be all left behind in the bag.
He cried out lustily, and dragged out his hand, to which a fine blue-black lobster was hanging, a creature at least as strange to Hugh as the monkey was to Jakes. The more he shook the tighter the lobster pinched, and when one of the sailors looked round the sail he could do nothing but split his sides with laughing. Hugh, crimson with pain and fright, was dancing about, vainly trying to disengage his hand. Jakes, the next to appear, broke into uproarious merriment.
“Ha, ha, ha!” he yelled, “told him there were apples in the bag, and he went for to steal ’em! Serve him right, serve him right! How like you your apples, my master?”