“Let me off this time, sir. I was nearly killed down there.”
“Nearly killed, you scoundrel! Serve you right; trying to steal a passage and food from the owner of this ship. How dare you do it?”
“I—I wanted to go abroad so badly, sir,” said the shivering wretch. “I’d no money, and no friends.”
“I should think not indeed. Who’d make a friend, do you think, of you?”
“Nobody, sir. I did try lots of captains to take me as a sailor, but no one would.”
“Why, of course they wouldn’t, you scoundrel!” stormed the first-mate. “Can you reef and splice and take your turn at the wheel?”
“No, sir,” whimpered the man.
“Can you go aloft without tumbling down and breaking somebody’s head instead of your own idle neck? Could you lay out on the foretop yard?”
“No, sir, but—but I’d try, sir, I would indeed, if you’d let me.”
“Let the poor wretch go, Gregory,” whispered the second-mate.