“There’s not a Baptis’ minister would look at you,” said Satan, winking at Ratcliffe.
“Damn Baptis’ ministers! You may work your old hooker yourself. I’ll skip! Two thousand of them dollars is mine, and next time we touch Havana I’ll skip!”
“And where’ll you skip to?”
“I’ll start a la’ndry.”
“Then you’ll have to black your face and wear a turban, same as the others—and marry a nigger. I can see you comin’ off for the ship’s washin’.”
Jude began to laugh in a crazy sort of way, then all at once she sobered down and went on with her dinner. One could never tell how her anger would end,—in tears, laughter of a wild sort, or just nothing.
Not another word was said about the family history of the Tylers, at least at that meal, and after it was over Jude made Ratcliffe help to wash up the plates and things in the galley.
“Satan’s Cap,” said Jude. “He never helps in the washin’ or swillin’. Not cold water!—land’s sake! where did you learn washin’ up?—hot! I’ve left some in that billy on the stove.”
She had taken off her old coat and rolled her guernsey sleeves up to the shoulders nearly, and it came to Ratcliffe as he helped that, without a word of remonstrance, naturally, and as a part adapts itself to the economy of a whole, he had sunk into the position of kitchen maid and general help to the Tyler family, taken the place of the nigger that had skipped; furthermore that Satan was less a person than a subtle influence. Satan seemed to obtain his ends more by wishing than by willing. He wanted an extra hand, and he had somehow put the spell of his wish on him, Ratcliffe. He had wished a drum of paint out of Simmons—and look at Skelton, the cynical and superior Skelton, sending off doles of coffee and “t’marters” to the dingy and disreputable Sarah Tyler, offering his mainsail to the rapacious Satan as a gibe! What had he been but a marionette dancing on the string of Satan’s wish?
Only for Jude and the Sarah and the queer new sense of freedom from all the associations he had ever known, only for something likable about Satan, the something that gave him power to wheedle things out of people and bend them to his wishes, Ratcliffe might have reacted against the Tyler hypnotism. As it was, the whole business seemed as jolly as a pantomime, as exciting as a new form of novel in which the folk were real and himself a character.