Rory could not help laughing.
“Funny old stick,” said Silas, joining in his merriment, “ain’t I?”
He did look all that and more, with his two elbows on the table, and his knuckles supporting his chin, for his face was as round as a full moon orient, and just the colour of a new flower-pot; then he laughed more with one side of his face than the other, his eyes were nowhere in the folds of his face, and his nose hardly worth mentioning.
After the laugh, beginning with Rory, had spread fairly round the table, everybody felt relieved.
“I’m only a plain, honest blubber-hunter, gentlemen,” said Silas Grig, apologetically, “with a large family and—and a small wife—but—but you do surprise me. There?”
(It is but fair to say that, as a rule, captains of Greenlandmen are far more refined in manner than poor Silas.)
But when McBain informed him that the Arrandoon would lay alongside him for a week or more, and help him to secure a voyage, and wouldn’t ship a single skin herself, Silas was more surprised than ever. Indeed, until this day I could not tell you what would have happened to Silas, had the mate not been providentially beside him to vent his feelings upon. On that unfortunate officer’s back he brought down his great shoulder-of-mutton fist with a force that made him jump, and his breath to come and go as if he had just been popped under a shower-bath.
“Luck’s come,” he cried. “Hey? hey?”
And every “hey?” represented a dig in the mate’s ribs with the skipper’s thumb of iron.
“Told ye it would, hey? Didn’t I? hey?”