Bob’s jaw dropped. He was as a rule ready enough, but he was so completely taken aback that he was now speechless.
“Ah,” said the captain, “your memory is so short that you cannot recollect. But try and bear this in mind, Mr Howlett. Don’t vapour and don’t brag. These things are not becoming to an officer and a gentleman.”
He passed on, and Bob’s face was a study.
“There, it’s all over,” he said, dismally. “Don’t laugh at a fellow. You might have said he was coming up.”
“I can’t help laughing, and I didn’t know, Bob, really,” said Mark, merrily, “Oh, I say, you did look a muff.”
“So would you,” said Bob, angrily. “There, I can’t say what I was going to say to you, only that their names are Soup and Taters. This is the one you brought aboard—Soup. And this is my one—Taters. Soup—Taters,” he said again, and he touched the two men on the shoulders as he spoke, both smiling faintly as they heard his words, and gazing from one to the other as if striving hard to catch the meaning. “Now then, what do you think of them?”
“They both seem to be big, strong, healthy fellows.”
“Yes, and I shall make first-class seamen of them.”
“I suppose so,” said Mark, smiling.
“There you go again—chaffing. Ah, you’re ever so much better,” grumbled Bob. Then turning to the two blacks—“Now then, you may both go below, only recollect that we’ve got a sort of right in you, because Mr Van here saved one of you, and I saved the other.”