“Make, Meester Young?” said the man, turning to gaze thoughtfully at the cask. “Observations.”
“Now, no gammon. Tell me!”
The man wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and spread his face into a dry kind of grin, just as if something hurt him, and he was smiling to show people that he did not mind.
“Observations,” he said again.
Steve gave him an angry look.
“Don’t you make stupid observations.”
Andrew McByle of Ballachulish, a well-tanned Scottish whaler, “went off”: that is to say, he did not leave the spot on the deck where he stood talking to Steve Young, but he went off like a clock or some other piece of machinery; for he suddenly gave a jerk, and made a peculiar noise inside somewhere about the throat, accompanied by some singular contortions of the face.
Steve pressed close up to him, for he had seen the contortions before.
“Look here, Andy,” he whispered, “do you want me to kick you?”
“Na, Mr Stevin.”