“Can you keep your nerve in a mix-up?”
“Do you mean a fight?” queried the Actor.
“Maybe.”
“I don't like fights—never did.” Anything that would imperil his safe return was to be avoided.
“I neither—but sometimes you've got to. Are you handy with a gun?”
“Why?”
“Nothing—I'm only asking.”
Carhart, the Man-Who-Knew-It-All, here lounged over from his seat by the table and dropped into a chair beside them, cutting short his reply. The Texan gave a significant look at the Actor, enforcing his silence, and then buried his face in a newspaper a month old.
Carhart spread his legs, tilted his head back on the chair, slanted his stiff-brim hat until it made a thatch for his nose, and began one of his customary growls: to the room—to the drenched port-holes—to the brim of his hat; as a half-asleep dog sometimes does when things have gone wrong with him—or he dreams they have.
“This ship reminds me of another old tramp, the Persia,” he drawled. “Same scrub crew and same cut of a Captain. Hadn't been for two of the passengers and me, we'd never got anywhere. Had a fire in the lower hold in a lot of turpentine, and when they put that out we found her cargo had shifted and she was down by the head about six feet. Then the crew made a rush for the boats and left us with only four leaky ones to go a thousand miles. They'd taken 'em all, hadn't been for me and another fellow who stood over them with a gun.”