Then he went further, and qualified the bombs in terms which need not be set down here.
“You know me and you know the Minnie, Mr. Cartoner!” continued the angry sailor. “She was specialty built with large hatches for machinery, and—well, guns. She was built to carry explosives, and there's not a man in London will insure her. Well, we got into the way of carrying war material. It was only natural, being built for it. But you'll bear me out, and there are others to bear me out, that we've only carried clean stuff up to now—plain, honest, fighting stuff for one side or the other. Always honest—revolutions and the like, and an open fight. But bombs——”
And here again the captain made use of nautical terms which have no place on a polite page.
“There's bombs about, and it's me that has been carrying them,” he concluded. “That is what I have got to tell you.”
“How do you know?” asked Cartoner, in his gentle and soothing way.
The captain settled himself in his chair, and crossed one leg over the other.
“Know the Johannis Bulwark, in Hamburg?”
Cartoner nodded.
“Know the Seemannshaus there?”
“Yes. The house that stands high up among the trees overlooking the docks.”