Webber questioned them, it is true; and if they stood the cross-examination, they were permitted to sign articles and join the ship.
One day an East Indian presented himself. He was tall, lithe, and smart, though there was a look in his eye that Webber hardly liked. He had been, he said, much at sea, as Lascar and even mate of an Englishman. Cross-questioned, and put to the test on board, he turned out to be really a master hand; so, despite his furtive looks, and a kind of tiger gleam that seldom or never left his dark eyes, the mate engaged him.
He thanked him profoundly, seized his hand, bent down, and pressed it to his brow.
The mate said, “Humbug!” pretty smartly, and Dungloo, as he called himself, retired, smiling, with gratitude—apparently.
This man was rather a picturesque figure on board the Zingara, for he was permitted to wear his native Indian dress and turban, for which latter a skull-cap was substituted when he was on duty.
He worked like a hero when on deck, but in the stormy weather off the Cape, and among the ice, he collapsed.
But now the warm weather brought him forth once more, as it brings the red admiral butterfly that has slumbered in some cosy cranny all the weary winter through.
Dungloo was once more his hardy, strong, athletic self.
. . . . . .