“No, Tom; I believe you to be a brave fellow that your officers can always trust.”
“Thankye, sir; that’s what I want to be—chap as can stand a bit o’ fire, sir, eh?” said the man, with a broad grin.
“Yes, Tom, and that’s what made me feel vexed at your being so superstitious.”
“Sooperstitious, sir?” said the man, giving his head another rub. “That’s what you call it, is it, sir? Well, but arn’t it enough to make a fellow feel a bit creepy, sir, to have them dry-land eels squirming about overhead ready to give him a nip as means Dr Reston shaking his head all over you and calling your messmates to sew you up in your hammock with a twenty-four pound shot at your feet, and the skipper reading the sarvice over you before the hatch upon which you lays is tilted up, and then splash, down you goes out o’ sight at gunfire. I don’t see, sir, as a fellow has much to be ashamed of in being a bit shivery.”
“Nor I, Tom, if he shivered from an instinctive fear of a poisonous serpent. But you were not afraid of that, eh?”
Tom May screwed up his face again with a comical grin, shook his head, and then, after a glance here and there at his messmates who were to be stationed as sentries—
“Well, not azackly, sir,” he said. “I was reg’larly skeared at something, and I did not know what; but I see now, sir. It was my natur’ to—what you called ’stinctive.”
“Well, we’ll leave it there, Tom,” said Murray smiling, “but I’m not quite satisfied. I’ll go and have a look by and by.”
“Ah! But Mr Murray, sir, you won’t go and think I was a bit—”
“Never mind what I thought, Tom; and now come on. I want to see about the positions the men are to be in. To begin with, I should like the two men in the cutter to lie off a bit further.”