“Now you will be so good as to proceed about your duty!” she commanded, haughtily.
“Well, you can't expect me to show any special neighborly kindness to the Wall Street gouger who kept me tied up without a charter two months last spring with his steamboat combinations and his dicker deals!”
“How are we to take that, sir?” asked Bradish.
The girl was staring with frank wonder at this hard-shelled mariner whom she had not been able to impress by her name or her manner.
“Just as you want to.”
“I demand an explanation.”
“Well, I'll give it to you, seeing that I'm perfectly willing to. Take it one way, and I'm willing to wallop Julius Marston by handing him the kind of a son-in-law you'd make; take it the other way, and I ain't particular about doing anything to accommodate anybody in the Marston family.” He eyed them sardonically.
“So, you see, I'm betwixt and between in the matter! It's like settling a question by flipping a cent. And I'll tell you what I'm going to do!” He smacked his palm on the table. He strode back toward the stateroom door. “Mate, ahoy, there! Sailor to sailor, now, and remember that you have asked something of me! If you were captain of this schooner would you marry off these two?”
They waited in silence, in which they heard the whummle and screech of the wind outside and the angry squalling of the sheathing of the plunging schooner's cabin walls.
The voice which replied to Captain Downs's query did not sound human. It was a sort of muffled wail, but there was no mistaking its positiveness.