“I don’t like Pills,” grumbled he. “He’s a tightwad; never even slipped me a cigar. He’s one o’ them fellers that stop the clock, nights, to save the works. S’pose I’d oughta respect old age, but old age ain’t always to be looked up to, as, fer instance, in the case of eggs. He’s been ratin’ Master Hal down, I reckon. An’ that wun’t do!”
Resentfully Ezra came back to the house and entered the hall. Into the front room Ezra walked, approached the fireplace and for a moment stood there, carefully observing the weapons. Then he reached up and straightened the position of the “Penang lawyer” club, on its supporting hooks.
“I got to git that jest right,” said he. “Jest exactly right. Ef the cap’n should see ’twas a mite out o’ place he might suspicion that was what Master Hal hit me with. So? Is that right, that way?”
With keen judgment he squinted at the club and gave it a final touch. The kris, also, he adjusted.
“I didn’t know Hal touched the toad-stabber, too,” he remarked. “But I guess he must of. It’s been moved some, that’s sure.
“I guess things’ll do now,” judged he, satisfied. “There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup an’ the lip, but there’s a damn sight more after the cup has been at the lip. That’s all that made Master Hal slip. He didn’t know, rightly, what he was up to. Forgive the boy? God bless him, you bet! A million times over!
“But that doctor, now, what’s been ratin’ Master Hal down—no, no, he’ll never be no friend o’ mine! Well, this ain’t gittin’ dinner ready fer Master Hal. A boy what can dive off Geyser Rock, an’ lick McLaughlin, an’ read heathen Chinee, an’ capture the purtiest gal in this town, is goin’ to be rationed proper, or I’m no cook aboard the snuggest craft that ever sailed a lawn, with lilacs on the port bow an’ geraniums to starb’d!”
Ezra gave a final, self-assuring glance at the Malay club that had so nearly ended his life, and turned back to his galley with a song upon his lips:
“A Yankee ship’s gone down the river,
Her masts an’ yard they shine like silver.
Blow, ye winds, I long to hear ye!
Blow, boys, blow!