"This same parson, Mr. Harris? Ye ain't sure about that?"
"Oh, shucks! Think thar's fourteen thousand parsons runnin' around Manila with a red-headed sailor that's too handy by far with a knife? Ain't I got brains in my head? He had to make room for his pals aboard here, didn't he? It's plain as Cape Cod Light to me, cap'n."
"Well, what does it all mean? You suppose this is what they want?"
"Ye don't guess they killed the bos'n and this Trego just for friendship sake, do ye? If ye want to know what my personal, private feelings are, it looks like we've been boarded by the Devil's Admiral."
"Sally Ann's black cat!" said Riggs. "That story was started by some sea-lawyer full of gin, and the newspapers took it up for fun. There ain't no more a Devil's Admiral than there is a Flying Dutchman."
"Wal, didn't I see the Flying Dutchman off the cape with my own eyes when I was second in the brig Peerless? Ye can't tell me thar ain't no Flying Dutchman, and ye can't make me believe thar ain't no Devil's Admiral—I've been told some things about both of 'em, and dang me for a blue-nose fisherman if I don't believe in 'em both!"
"Who is your Devil's Admiral aboard here, then?"
"The parson."
"You're full of hashish! You been bothered lately with your head, Mr.
Harris?"
"That's all right, cap'n. When a man looks overside and says ten knots and better, and the log says ten knots and a shade, he ain't no landsman. He spits to looward like a commodore, that parson, and I've had my suspicions right along."