“No, sir, you can’t; but me and Tommy Smith have been at it for some time, whenever we gets a puff o’ wind.”
“Been at what?”
“Sniffin’, sir. Every now and then you gets it a smellin’ o’ hysters. Next minute it’s mussels, and directly after it’s cockles all alive o’!”
“And sea-weed, Billy Wriggs.”
“So it is, messmate, but I didn’t say nowt, cause sea-weed’s such common stuff.”
“Yes, he’s right,” said Drew. “I can smell the sea quite plainly.”
“Like mussels, sir?” said Smith.
“No,” replied Drew, smiling. “It’s more like sea-weed to me, my lad.”
“That’s it, sir. All the same,” growled Smith. “Means as we’re close to the shore, anyhow. I kept on a-listening, ’specting to hear the sea go boom, boom on the reef; sir, and thinking about the sharp rocks going through the bottom of a ship.”
Wark, wark, wok, wok, wok!