As he thought this he walked to the door of the galley and looked in, to find that the cook was rating the boy of whom he had been thinking.
“What!” he was saying; “want to go and be ready to take to the boats? You stay where you are till you’re wanted. They won’t leave us behind. Such a fuss about getting up a bit of steam; why, I’d have made that water boil an hour ago if I’d had it to do. They don’t know how to manage it!”
“Ow—!”
This was a dismal beginning of a howl from Watty.
“Here, stop that, you miserable Highland calf! You’ve got breeches on, so I suppose you’re a boy! Do you suppose an English lad would make that row? I’ll be bound to say Mr Steve Young’s somewhere aft, with his hands in his pockets as usual, looking on as cool as a cucumber.”
“Na, he’s a cooard!” cried Watty viciously,—“a lang, ugly cooard! Makking a show o’ gooing up aloft, and all the time had to be held on.”
“You’d better not let him hear you say that, my lad, or he’ll thrash you.”
“Yah! not he!” whined the boy. “He’s a cooard, that’s what he is; and he’s on deck waiting to be ane of the fust to go off in the boots, and I’m kep’ doon here.”
“Stop that row!” cried the cook viciously.
“I canna, I canna! Awm thenking aboot my mither!”