“Can’t you put in a word to the skipper, sir, and get him to stir up the engyneers?”
“What for, Tom?”
“To go faster, sir. It’s horrid, this here. Why, I could go and ketch ’em in the dinghy.”
“Do you want the Teaser stuck in the mud?” I said.
“No, sir, o’ course not; but I say, sir, do you think it’s all right?”
“What do you mean, Jecks?”
“This here river, sir. I ayve read in a book about Chinee Tartars and magicians and conjurors. There was that chap in ‘Aladdin’ as left the boy shut up down below. He were a Chinee, wasn’t he?”
“I think so, Tom; but what have the Arabian Nights got to do with our hunting these pirates?”
“Well, that’s what I want to know, sir. If there was magic in them days in China, mayn’t there be some left now?”
“No, Tom,” I said. “We’ve got more magic on board the Teaser in the shape of steam, than there is of the old kind in all China.”