“No, sir, and that’s what the Frenchmen would say. Now, what in the world is that chap after, with his mission, as he calls it? What does he mean by coming rampaging out south with a hole in the bottom of his brig and the pumps going straight on to keep the water down? Would any one but a lunatic go risking his crew and his vessel like that?”
“Well, it does seem rather wild,” replied Rodd thoughtfully.
“Wild? Well, that’s only your way of saying he’s stick, stark, staring mad. And here he’s been out weeks and weeks, knowing as he says that his brig was sinking, when he could have put in at Gib, or the Azores, or Las Palmas, or brought up in one of the West Coast rivers, where he could run up on the tidal mud, careened his vessel, and set his ship’s carpenter to work to clap patches upon her bottom outside and in. Don’t you call that mad?”
“No. He might have had reasons for not doing so.”
“Ah, that’s right, sir; argufy. You young scholarly chaps who have been to big schools and got your heads chock-full of Latin and Greek, you are beggars to argufy—chopping logic, I suppose you calls it—and I give in. You could easily beat me at that; just as easily as I could turn you round my little finger at navigation. But I’ll have one more go at you; I says that there French Count is mad.”
“And I say he is not,” said Rodd, “only a brave, eccentric nobleman who may have a good many more reasons for what he does than we know.”
“All right, youngster. I give you my side. Now that’s yours. Now, just answer me this. Warn’t it the crack-brainedest bit of ask-you-to-go-and-borrow-a-new-strait-waistcoat-to-put-me-in sort of a job for him to bring his two boat-loads of men, like a black-flag-and-cross-boned Paul Jones sort of a pirate, aboard our schooner in the dark, thinking he’s going to take possession of it to use instead of his own brig, when if he’d had any gumption he might have managed to patch her up, and— Here, I say, I can’t go on talking like this before breakfast, my lad. I must have my bowl of coffee and a bit of salt pork and biscuit before I say another word.”
“Oh, very well,” cried Rodd merrily. “I see we shan’t agree; and we don’t want to quarrel, do we, captain?”
“Quarrel? Not us, my lad! It takes two to do that, and we knows one another too well.”
“Then look here,” cried Rodd, “you are taking it very coolly and talking about breakfast; aren’t you going to order the boat out and go aboard the brig at once?”