“I see,” commented the skipper meditatively; “yes, I reckon I kinder understand the situation. By the by, did you say, just now, that you was a purty good navigator, or did I only fancy it?”
“I don’t remember having exactly said such a thing,” I replied; “but possibly I may have implied as much. Anyhow, I think I am justified in saying that I am navigator enough to take a ship from any one part of the world to any other.”
“Ah!” returned the skipper; “I had an idee that I’d understood as much. Now, then, just listen to me. I guess I can’t put ye ashore until we arrives at Punta Arenas, away down there in the Magellan Straits, because the solid fact is that I’m in a most tarnation, all-fired hurry to get into the Pacific. Of course I’ll be very willin’ to tranship ye into a homeward-bounder, if we happens to fall in with one—and you really wants to go. But I’ve been thinkin’ matters over a bit while we’ve been talkin’, and I’ve a proposition to make that maybe’ll suit ye just as well as goin’ back to the old country. I s’pose you’ve noticed that I haven’t got nary a mate with me?”
“Well,” I confessed, “to tell you the truth, I’ve been wondering how it is that I have not yet seen him.”
“You ha’n’t seen him because I guess he ain’t here to see,” remarked the skipper. “I been unfort’nit in the matter o’ mates this trip,” he continued. “My reg’lar mate what always sails with me is my nevvy, Abr’am Brown, as slick a youngster as ever I wish to see. But he met with an accident the day before we sailed; trod on a banana peel, fell awk’ardly, broke his right leg, had to go to the hospital, and I had to look round in a hurry for somebody to take his place. Got a chap that looked all right; but we hadn’t been to sea above forty-eight hours when he made a bad break—got so tarnation drunk that I couldn’t get him out of his bunk for a night and a day. And a’ter that he kept on soakin’ on the sly—though where he got the liquor from I couldn’t find out to save my life—until things come to such a pass that if it hadn’t been that I was in such a tarnation hurry I’d have put in somewhere and fired him. Wisht I had, now. But I didn’t; and the end of it was that he went crazy, jumped overboard, and was drowned, one dark night when we’d been out just three weeks.
“Now, my proposition is this. You look real smart, and are a good navigator, while I’m short of a mate. If you care to accept the position I’ll sign ye on at the same rate of pay—namely, thirty dollars a month—that the other chap was gettin’. Now, what d’ye say?”
“But I don’t even know yet where you are bound for, or what is the probable duration of the voyage,” I objected. “Naturally I should like to know these particulars before binding myself.”
“Sure,” agreed the skipper, in nowise offended at my apparent hesitation. “Well then,” he continued, “I’m boun’ for a certain spot in the Pacific, for a certain very partic’lar reason: and if you agree to sign on I’ll tell ye the reason, and just exactly where the spot is; but if you don’t sign on it won’t matter to you where I’m goin’, or what I’m out after. That’s one of the reasons for this here v’yage. T’other is to trade off a lot of truck what I’ve got down below, for sandalwood. And when I’ve got a full cargo of the wood I propose to go on to Canton, sell it, and buy tea with the proceeds; said tea to be sold in due course at New York, where the v’yage will end. And I reckon that the trip’ll run into all of eight or nine months.”
“And a jolly fine trip it will be,” remarked Cunningham. “I wish I had your chance, Temple; I would take it like a shot.”
“You don’t say?” remarked the skipper, eyeing Cunningham earnestly. “But then, you see, you ain’t a sailor,” he observed.