“You’ll hear of this again, Mr Tom May,” said Murray.
“Yes, sir, I s’pose so,” said the big sailor grumpily. “That’s just like me. It’s just as an old mate of mine once said. ‘You’ve got a horkerd sort o’ mouth, Tommy, you have,’ he says. ‘You never opens it but you puts your foot in it.’”
“Hist! What does that mean, Tom?” whispered the middy.
“Means it’s so plaguey dark that you can’t see what’s going on.”
“Yes, but you can listen, sir.”
“Oh, Mr Murray, sir, don’t you come down upon me too. Just then it was Mister Tom May; and now it’s sir. I didn’t mean no harm, sir. It cheers a man up, to try and think a bit cheery, ’specially when you’re expecting a bullet every minute to come in for’ard and pass out astarn.”
“Don’t talk, man,” whispered Murray. “Can’t you hear the enemy?”
“Yes, sir: that’s them, sir, creeping up towards us through the bushes.”
The man spoke with his lips close to the middy’s ear.
The silence seemed to be terrible, and to Murray the feeling was that he could not breathe.