“Well, but you’ve found out now, I suppose?” interjected his questioner sharply.
“I suppose we has, cap’en. There’s Will Driver, and Joel Grigg, and Lander, and Hawkins, and Job Watson—not that he’s any great loss—and Dick Timmins, and—”
“Confound you, Jennings! how many?” roared the captain, so fiercely, that the dog sprang up, and began barking furiously. “Don’t keep on pottering in that way, but tell me the worst at once. How many are gone? Keep quiet, you brute, do you hear? How many, I say?”
“About fifteen, cap’en,” blurted out the quartermaster, shaking in his shoes. “Leastways there’s fifteen, or it may be sixteen, as can’t be found, or—”
“Fifteen or sixteen, or some other number,” shouted the skipper. “Tell me the exact number, you old idiot, or I’ll disrate you! Confound that dog! Turn him out.”
“Sixteen’s the exact number we can’t find,” returned Jennings, “but some of ’em may be aboard, and turn up sober by-and-by.”
“Small chance of that,” muttered the captain. “Well, it’s no use fretting; the question is, What’s to be done? We were short-handed before—so you thought, didn’t you, Jennings?”
“Well, cap’en, we hadn’t none too many, that’s sartain; and we should have been all the better for half a dozen more.”
“That comes to the same thing, doesn’t it?” said the skipper, who, vexed and embarrassed as he was, could not help being a little diverted at the old man’s invincible reluctance to speaking out.
“Well, I suppose it does, sir,” he answered, “only you see—”