“Then he and she went down to the cabin to make explanashions, and the parties in the boats tried to board us, till I threatened them with a boat hook and made them fend off while we got way on the Heart.
“When we were near into Avalon Bay, the Culps came on deck, and old man Culpepper took off his hat to me and Blood and made us a speech, sayin’ we’d lifted weights off his heart, and all such.
“‘Never mind,’ says Blood, ‘we haven’t done nuthin’. Put it all down to Providence,’ says he, ‘for if we saved her she saved us, and I ain’t used to bein’ thanked for nothin’.’
“But, Lord bless you, you might as well have tried to stop the Mississippi in flood as that old party when he’d got his thank gates up. He said we were an honour to merchant seamen, which we weren’t, and the great American nation—and Blood black Irish and me Welsh, with an uncle that was a Dutchman—and then I’m blest if he didn’t burst into po’try about the flag that waves over us all.
“It began to look like ten thousand dollars in gold coin for each of us, and more than like it when we’d dropped anchor in the bay and he told us to come ashore with him.
“Now I don’t know how longshore folk[1] have such sharp noses, but I do know them longshore boatmen on Avalon Beach seemed to know by the cut of the Heart and us we weren’t no simple seamen, with flags wavin’ over us and an honour to our what-you-call-it navy. They sniffed at us by some instinct or other, more special a wall-eyed kangaroo by the name of Aransas Jim, I think it were.
“Said nothin’ much, seein’ old man Culp was disembarkin’ us with an arm round each of our necks, so to say, but we took up their looks, and I’d to lay pretty strong holts on myself or I’d have biffed the blighters, lot o’ screw-neck mongrels, so’s their mothers wouldn’t have known which was which when sortin’ the manglin’.
“Now you listen to what happened then. Culp he took us up to a big hotel, where niggers served us with a feed in a room by ourselves. Champagne they give us, and all sorts of truck I’d never set eyes on before. And when it was over in came old man Culp with an envelope in his hand, which he gives to Blood.
“‘Just a few dollars for you and your mate,’ says he, ‘and you have my regards always.’