“Well, I’ve got it worse than you have, haven’t I? Lost everything I’ve got except what’s in my chest.”
“And it begins to look as if you’ve lost that too, my lad,” said Gunson bitterly. “You’d better have waited a bit before you began to learn to smoke. There goes your chest and your passage money.”
“Yes, and ours,” I said, as Gunson pointed to where the schooner’s sails were once more full, and she was gliding away. “Is it any use to shout and hail them?”
“Stretch your breathing tackle a bit, my lad,” said the master. “Do you good p’r’aps.”
“But wouldn’t they hear us?”
“No; and if they did they wouldn’t stop,” said the master; and we all sat silent and gloomy, till the injury Esau had inflicted upon us through that pipe came uppermost again.
“Serves you well right, Esau,” I said to him in a low voice. “You deserve to lose your things for sneaking off like that to buy a pipe. You—pish—want to learn to smoke!”
I said this with so much contempt in my tones that my words seemed to sting him.
“Didn’t want to learn to smoke,” he grumbled.
“Yes, you did. Don’t make worse of it by telling a lie.”