“What’s that?” said Fitz sharply.
“Wait for daylight.”
“Oh!” cried Fitz impatiently. “Impossible! We can’t do that.”
“Well, I don’t know, Mr Burnett, sir,” growled the boatswain, gazing round. “Seems to me as if we must. Look here, you Bob Jackson,” he almost roared now, as he turned sharply on the shivering foremast-man who had just been brought back to life, “what have you got to say for yourself for getting us all into such a mess as this? I always thought you were a bit of a swab, and now I knows it.”
“Don’t bully the poor fellow,” cried Poole hotly. “It was an accident.”
“Of course it was, sir,” cried the boatswain, in an ill-used tone, as he drew off his jacket and began to wring it as tightly as he could; “and accidents, as I have heared say, will happen in the best-manned vessels. One expects them, and has to put up with them when they comes; but people ought to have accidents at proper times and places, not just when we’ve escaped running ourselves down, and the Spanish gunboat’s arter us. Now then, Bob, don’t sit there hutched up like a wet monkey. Speak out like a man.”
“I haven’t got nothing to say, Mr Butters, sir, only as I am very sorry, and much obliged to you for saving my life.”
“Much obliged! Sorry! Wuss and wuss! Yah! Look at that now! Wuss and wuss. It never rains but it pours.”
“What’s the matter?” cried Fitz, for the boatswain had made a sudden dash with one hand as if striving to catch something that had eluded his grasp.
“Matter, sir? Why, I squeeged my brass ’bacca-box out of my jacket-pocket. It was chock-full, and it would go down like lead. Here, I give up now. Give your orders, Mr Poole, and I’ll row or do anything else, for I’m quite out of heart.”