“Well, then, let me tell you a home truth.”
“Ah, do! Anything about home and the truth would be delicious here. Wish I could have an ice!”
“There you go! I say, can’t you get tired of talking?”
“No, dear boy. I suppose it is my nature to. What is a fellow to do? You won’t.”
“No, I’m too hot. I wish every slaver that sails these muddy seas was hung at the yard-arm of his own nasty rakish schooner.”
“Hee-ah, hee-ah, hee-ah! as we say in Parliament.”
“Parliament! Parler, to talk!” grunted the other. “That’s where you ought to be, Frank, and then you’d be in your element.”
“Oh, I say! I was only politely agreeing with you. That was a splendid wish. The beasts! The wretches! But somehow they don’t get their deserts. Here have we been two months on this station, and I haven’t had so much as a squint of a slaver. I don’t believe there are any. All myths or fancies—bits of imagination.”
“Oh, there are plenty of them, lad, but they know every in and out of these mangrove-infested shores, and I’ll be bound to say they are watching us day by day, and as soon as we are lost in one of these foggy hazes it’s up with their lug sails, and they glide away like—like—like—here, what do they glide away like? I’m not as clever as you. I’m at a loss for words. Give me one—something poetic, Frank.”
“Steam out of a copper.”