“Why, man?”
“’Cause he’s such a overbearing sort of a chap. He’s one of them kind as always thinks he’s skipper, and every one else is afore the mast. If he’d come aboard the ship and hailed me, I should ha’ ast him to sit down on the deck and handed him the bacco; but when I comes in he sits and stares at one orty like, and goes on taking his bacco, in a savage sorter way, up his nose, and never so much as says, ‘Have a pinch, mate,’ or the like.”
“You don’t know him, my man,” said Dutch, quietly.
“And don’t want to,” growled the old sailor. “I should just like to have him aboard our vessel for a month. I’d show him how to count ten, I know.”
“Well, there are more unlikely things,” said Dutch. “Perhaps he may sail with you.”
“What, are we going off, sir?” said the sailor, facing round.
“I don’t know yet,” said Dutch, “but it is possible.”
“I’m glad on it,” said the sailor, giving his canvas trousers a slap. “I’m tired o’ hanging about the coast as we do. All this diving work’s very well, but I want to get out in the blue again.”
“Tell me all about the upset over the work,” said Dutch. “Is Tolly bad?”
“Not he, sir,” chuckled the sailor. “I’d ha’ cured him with a rope’s-end in about two twos. Didn’t want to go down, and when the skipper turned rusty, and said as how he must, his mates takes sides with him, and say as Mr Parkley wants to send ’em to their death, and then the real sore place comes out—they wants a rise in the pay. ‘Well, then,’ says the skipper, ‘I’ll send for Mr Parkley;’ and then Tolly says in his blustering way, ‘Ah,’ he says, ‘I ain’t afraid to go down, and if I loses my life it’s all the governor’s fault.’ So down he goes, and dreckly after he begins pulling his siggle rope, and they pulls him up, unscrews him, and lays him on the deck, and gives him cold grog.”