“Not me—not with Satan handy to do the fighting. I’d only to say to one, ‘You touch me and I’ll put Satan on you,’ and he’d shrivel.”
“Well, I shouldn’t care to tackle Satan myself,” admitted Ratcliffe. “And Sellers seemed to think a lot of him that way, for I heard him asking if he’d stand by if Cleary showed fight.”
“Garn!” said Jude. “Cleary—he’s no good; Sellers is no good, neither. There’s not a man in these seas nowadays that’s got the fight of a tomcat in him. That’s what Pap used to say. He was great on old times, and used to string off yarns about the pirates and the high doin’s there used to be, and he said we were nothing but a lot of scowbankers now—and that’s the truth! If Cleary comes up with Cark, they’ll be shaking hands and kissing one another, feeling in each other’s pockets all the time to see if they can’t steal five cents. In the old days they’d have been cutting each other’s throats.”
“Would you like to be a pirate, Jude?”
“You bet!”
“Murdering people?”
“Oh, ask me another.”
“How’d you like to kiss Cark?”
The crying of the gulls above the spit was coming up against the wind, a lamentable sound across the lone blue sea.