“Let’s try ’em, Mas’r Harry,” said Tom eagerly.
“Try them! What, bathe? Why, Tom, you must be mad!”
“I never said a word about bathing, Mas’r Harry,” he responded rather grumpily. “I said, Let’s try ’em. I say if we had a big hook and line, Mas’r Harry,” he continued, with a broadly comical grin, “and baited with nice fat little niggers, what sport we should have.”
“Nice fun for the little niggers as you call them, Tom,” I said.
“Yes, it wouldn’t be very nice for them, Mas’r Harry. But I say, let’s see if they’d go at a bait.”
“How?” I cried.
“Stop a moment, and I’ll show you,” he said; and running to where one of the firemen was having a quiet pipe on deck, I saw Tom accost him, and then go down into the stoke-hole, to come up again directly with a big lump of slaty coal, bearing which he joined me.
“Let’s drop this in gently,” he said, “just over them; or, no, it would make such a splash some of the sailors would come to see. I’ve got a bit of string in my pocket.”
Tom always had a bit of string in his pocket, and unrolling it he loosely tied it round the lump of coal, and then getting well on the bulwark raised the coal gently up and over the side, beginning to lower it down.
“Take care you don’t go over instead of the coal, Tom,” I said with a grim smile.