“I didn’t say nuthin’ of the sort,” said Jim. “I said Gord A’mighty had given it teeth to chaw with, and you fillin’ it up with pap like that, that’s what I said and that’s what I sticks to.”
“Then what were you sayin’ about goats?” fired Bowers. “Where’s the chawin’ to be done with goat’s milk—”
“Goats, nuthin’! I was talkin’ of Kanakas feedin’ their young uns on goat’s milk. Can’t a man talk without bein’ took up and havin’ his words shoved down his throat?”
“I ain’t shovin’ no words down no throats,” replied the bo’sun, lighting his pipe, “and we’ll leave it there. Bill, ain’t you goin’ to get that ridin’ light fixed?” He stumped forward and the discussion dropped, but the tension remained. Then, as the anchor light cast its amber on the waving lagoon water and the moon was raising her forehead across the reef, a hail came from the shore.
Lestrange and Stanistreet had returned, taking their way along the lagoon bank. The boat put off to their hail, and they came on board.
After supper, and on the moonlit deck, the captain of the Ranatonga went back to the subject they had been discussing on their way to the ship.
“No, sir,” said he. “I don’t like it and nothing will make me like it, sailing off like that and leaving you here. I’m talking as man to man, and you’re not as young as you were. Well, I’ve said my say, and as I was saying on the beach there, I’m willing to take your orders up to a point, and that point is leaving some one with you. Bowers I can’t part with, so it must be one of the others. Question is, which?”
“But what is to harm me?” said Lestrange. “You see a man who only craves for solitude. It is true I am not as young as I was, but I am active and, as you know, I have the simplest tastes. I can get my food without trouble here where there is food on every hand. Before going on that voyage years ago, when the consumption first threatened me, I camped out all alone away in the Adirondacks and kept myself with a gun and a rod. I am more vigorous now than then.”
“Well, sir,” said the sailor, “it’s just myself I’m thinking of. You say I’m to come back in a year, but I wouldn’t have any peace of mind till then, and a year’s a long time.”
“Well, be it so,” said the other, “leave me one of your sailors; after all, these honest fellows are more like children than men, and I would prefer one of them to any other companion—if companion I must have.”