"Yes," said Appleby, grinning, "now you've got it. If you'd had any sense you'd have seen we were too thin for navy lads, and too young for the marines."
There was a chuckle, and the man, who had twinkling blue eyes, stretched out an inviting arm. "Then come along, darling, and ate," he said.
They sat down on a chest, and one of the company gave each of them a can of very good coffee, and pointing to the great piece of fish in a frying-pan tossed a loaf in their direction.
"Ned Jordan will see you earn it, so you needn't be afraid," he said.
Appleby helped himself, and Niven laughed when he saw that the men were watching him admiringly. "They feed you well out here," he said. "We didn't get soft bread and halibut for breakfast on board the Aldebaran."
"This," said a grinning man, "is a great country. Now I'm going to raise you, Donegal. The lad's with me."
The man he spoke to turned with a sparkle in his eyes, and the sun that shone down the hatch glinting on his coppery hair.
"This," he said, "is not a country—'tis the sea, an' the place ye come from is made up of the leavings of the old one. 'Tis the dumping-ground for all them we've no use for yonder—bankrupts, suicides and green-and-red-blind sailors. When a gintleman in my country is too big a nuisance to his neighbours, the boys sind the hat round and prisint him wid a ticket for Canadaw."
He brought out the last word with the accentuation of the French Canadian; but the big, lean sailorman only grinned at him. "An'," he said, "fwhat was ut brought you here thin, Donegal?"
Donegal laughed softly. "A hare," said he. "She would come an' sit on the turf-wall winking—impudent at me, an' with one of the guns that was out in '98 in the cabin, what would anny man of intilligince do? She was a good gun if ye gave her time and had something sthrong to lean her on, but the magistrate—an' me owing him tin pound rint—did not agree with me. There was no Ground Game Act thin, an' ye tuck the chances when ye went shooting in my counthry. Would ye be finding the lads another loaf—one is no use to them—Brulée, and now Mainsail Haul, was it the mate or the skipper who did not agree with ye?"