“Oh, you’re there, are you?” I cried, as Tom Jecks came cautiously on deck. “I should have thought that a man of your years would have known better than to help torment this poor Chinaman.”
“Not velly poor,” he whispered. “Ching got fancee shop. Plenty plize-money now.”
“Didn’t have nought to do with it,” growled Tom Jecks.
“Then who did, sir?”
“Dunno, sir; some o’ the boys. I was caulking till they wakened me wi’ laughing.”
“But you saw it done?”
“No, sir; it was all done aforehand. They’d turned his tail into a bull-roarer, and if you was to swing it round now like a windmill, it would make no end of a row.”
“Silence, sir,” I cried. “It’s disgraceful.”
“Lor’, sir, they on’y meant it for a bit of a lark.”
“Then they should lark among themselves, and not take advantage of a poor foreigner whom they ought to protect.”