“No knowing what you might swallow off this here nasty, cold, foggy, stony coast.”
“There you go again, Dick; not so good as Lincolnshire coast, I suppose?”
“As good, sir? Why, how can it be?” said the broad, sturdy sailor addressed. “Nothin’ but great high stony rocks, full o’ beds of great flat periwinkles and whelks; nowhere to land, nothin’ to see. I am surprised at you, sir. Why, there arn’t a morsel o’ sand.”
“For not praising your nasty old flat sandy shore, with its marsh beyond, and its ague and bogs and fens.”
“Wish I was ’mong ’em now, sir. Wild ducks there, as is fit to eat, not iley fishy things like these here.”
“Oh, bother! Wish I could have had another hour or two’s sleep. I say, Dirty Dick, are you sure the watch wasn’t called too soon?”
“Nay, sir, not a bit; and, beggin’ your pardon, sir, if you wouldn’t mind easin’ off the Dirty—Dick’s much easier to say.”
“Oh, very well, Dick. Don’t be so thin-skinned about a nickname.”
“That’s it, sir. I arn’t a bit thin-skinned. Why, my skin’s as thick as one of our beasts. I can’t help it lookin’ brown. Washes myself deal more than some o’ my mates as calls me dirty. Strange and curious how a name o’ that kind sticks.”
“Oh, I say, don’t talk so,” said the lad by the rough sailor’s side; and after another yawn he began to stride up and down the deck of His Majesty’s cutter White Hawk, lying about a mile from the Freestone coast of Wessex.