“Cut of the jib, sir—cut of the jib,” said the old man. “What else could he think? ’Sides, Yankee slaving skippers have got consciences, same as other men.”
“Rubbish, Mr Dempsey!” said Roberts contemptuously.
“Course they are, sir—worst of rubbish, as you say, but there’s bad consciences as well as good consciences, and a chap like him, carrying on such work as his, must be always ready to see a king’s ship in every vessel he sights. But well, young gentlemen, as I was a-saying, he sights us, and there was no chance for him with us close on his heels but dodgery.”
“Dodgery, Mr Dempsey?” said Roberts.
“Yes, sir; Yankee tricks. Of course he couldn’t fight, knowing as he did that it meant a few round shot ’twixt and ’tween wind and water, and the loss of his craft. So he says to himself, ‘what’s to be done?’ and he plays us that trick. Sends his schooner up the river while he puts off in that there lugger and pretends to be a injyrubber grower. That ought to have been enough to set the skipper and Mr Anderson thinking something was wrong, but that’s neither here nor there. He pretends that he was a highly respectable sort of fellow, when all the time he was a sorter human fox, and lures, as the captain calls it, our sloop into this sort of a branch of the big river where the current runs wrong way on because part of the waters of the great river discharges theirselves. And then what follows?”
“Why, we were carried by the strange current into the muddy shallow and nearly capsized, Mr Dempsey, while we had the satisfaction of seeing the slaver sail away with her crew,” interposed Murray impatiently.
The grizzly-headed, red-faced old boatswain turned upon the lad with an offended air and said with dignity—
“If you’d only had a little patience, Mr Murray, I was going to tell you all that.”
He grunted audibly as he walked away, and as soon as he was out of hearing Murray cried impatiently—
“What did he want to bore us with all that for? Tiresome old fogey! But I say, Dick, you take my advice—don’t you get anywhere near the skipper if you can help it to-day. He took things very smoothly before breakfast, but you’ll see now that he will be as savage as a bear with a sore head, as they say, and lead every one a terrible life.”