“Oh no, Joe. My uncle was asking him about what curiosities there are in the country. That’s why he said he had been thinking about them.”
“Oh, I see. But how rum things is, and how easy a man can make mistakes! Now, if I had been asked my opinion I should have said that that there was a chap as couldn’t think even in Spanish; sort of a fellow as could eat, sleep and smoke, and then begin again, day after day and year after year. This is a rum sort of a world, Mr Rodd, sir, and there’s all sorts of people in it. Now look at that there skipper. He fancies hisself, he does, pretty creature! White trousers, clean shirt every morning, and a red scarf round his waist. ’Andsome he calls hisself, I suppose. He don’t know that even a respectable dog as went to drink in a river and saw hisself, like that there other dog in the fable, would go and drown hisself on the spot if he found he’d a great set of brown teeth like his!”
“Ah, Joe, Spaniards are not like Englishmen.”
“Oh, but I don’t call him a Spaniard, sir. I’ve seen Spaniards—regular grand Dons, officers and gentlemen, with nothing the matter with them at all, only what they couldn’t help, and that’s being Spaniards instead of Englishmen. These are sort of mongrels. Some of this ’ere crew are what people call mollottoes. They are supposed to be painted white men, but payed over with a dirty tar-brush. Talk about a easy-going lot! Why, I aren’t seen one of them do a stroke of work to-day. They are in the ile trade, aren’t they, sir? Palm-oil.”
“Yes, Joe; I suppose so.”
“Ah, that accounts for it, sir. Handling so much ile that it makes them go so easy.”
The sailor burst into a long soft laugh, “What are you laughing at, Joe?”
“That warn’t laughing, sir; that was smiling. When I laugh hearty you can hear me a long way off.”
“Well, what were you smiling at?”
“I was thinking, sir, about how it would be if our old man had that lot under him. My word, how he’d wake them up! Poor, simple, sleepy beggars! It would set them thinking that they hadn’t took a skipper aboard, but a human hurricane. I wonder who owns that there craft, and whether he gets anything out of the oil trade. Viva, indeed! Yes, our old man would give them something to viva about. Their skipper too—nice way of coming up a river to get a cargo. Well, I suppose they get their tobacco pretty cheap; and that’s how the world turns round.”