Yet really he was in the pilot-house at this time not chiefly for the river, nor the girl, nor the Votaress, though the Votaress was new, with kinks of character quite her own and important to be learned. He was there because the stateroom given Hayle's twins in the texas was next to his, and they, rarely in their life having restricted themselves to tones of privacy and being now especially in a state of storm and stress, had made sleep impossible even to a pilot off watch after a midday Sunday dinner. Lounging in his berth, he had overheard things which ought to be told to one Courteney or another early, though, of course, casually.
Meantime he enjoyed not telling his partner, at whose back he quietly chatted while the partner stood with hands and foot on the wheel and with eyes well up the river, holding the jack-staff close to his "mark" far ahead in the next bend.
"I couldn't stay," drawled Watson. "Noth'n' 'twixt the sick one an' me but a half-inch bulkhead."
"Cholery can't scratch through a half-inch bulkhead," said the partner.
"Sounds kin. Funny what little bits o' ones kin. An' the sawt o' keen, soft way he hollas an' cusses through his sot teeth an' whines an' yaps into his piller—why, he's suffered enough by now to be dead five times over."
"That sufferin', that ain't the peggin'-out stage."
"No, I know that, an' I don't misdoubt but what he's a-goin' to git well."
"Hmm!—sorry fo' that. What's goin' to kyore him?"
"His simon-pyo' cussedness! He's so chuck full of it—looks like it's a-p'isonin' the p'ison o' the cholery."
"Pity!" said the partner.... "Humph! Now what's up?"