“Is there?” said the man, touching his rather prominent feature tenderly. “Humph! It do feel a bit like it. Never mind; I’ll report mysen to the doctor when I get aboard again, and he’ll put on a patch of his solid black—that as he keeps ready to lay on all at once. But I say, Mr Murray, sir,” he added, closing up to his young officer, “you did me good in saying what you did. I felt real bad without you, sir, and as if I’d not been doing my dooty like to let you get away from me as I did.”
“Nonsense, Tom! Who could help it? But it was awkward to be separated like that. I began to be afraid that we should never get together again.”
“Well, sir, that’s just what I got a touch of, sir, but I pulled myself up short, sir, and I says to myself, ‘Mr Murray’s too good an orficer,’ I says, ‘not to find his way out of any hole as these slave-hunting varmint would dig for him.’”
“There you go again, Tom,” cried Murray angrily. “You know how I hate flam.”
“I’m blest, sir!” cried the man, in an ill-used tone. “Oh, you are hard upon me, sir.”
“Then you shouldn’t stoop to flattery.”
“Flattery, sir? Well, if that warn’t honest I’m a Dutchman. I only wish I’d got a witness, sir, as heared me say it, sir; but I only says it to myself, and you don’t believe him.”
“Yes, I do, Tom,” cried Murray.
“Hullo, sir! They’re at it again somewhere else.”
“Pst!” whispered Murray, holding up his hand and stepping on tiptoe towards a door at one end of the room, partly hidden by a thick curtain.