“I’ve always wondered why they call them that?”
“You can look it up in the dictionary. But that’s not the point. You must consult one. You’re ill.”
“Oh? I hadn’t noticed it. Bates hasn’t said anything about it.”
“I presume you have not informed Bates that you propose to embark not only your capital, but your self, on a rickety old Levantine schooner with a crew of cut-throat niggers, a young scapegrace of a brother, and some kind of a sea-captain, about whom you know nothing whatever, except that he has spent his life trying to pick up a precarious living among all sorts of dagoes in the East.”
“Edmund is a pretty good judge of a boat, you know, and if she has come here from the Mediterranean she ought to be able to take me to the Channel Islands and back.”
Marshall only snorted in the way that I particularly loathed.
“Anyhow,” I continued, “my taking a trip for pleasure is no part of the business. It does not come into the agreement. As for the money, you know I should not be ruined by the loss of a couple of thousand pounds, though I don’t want to lose it, and I don’t believe I shall. I’m doing it to help Edmund.”
“Well, I won’t draft any such damned agreement!”
“I’m sorry. I shall have to get somebody in Brighton. Who is the best solicitor there?”
“I had better recommend you to the worst, I think. But, seriously, Davoren, are you going on with this?”