“Would I mind what?” asked the Captain.
“Would you mind telling me? Are you tatooed on your body, snakes and ships and things, like a gardener once we had? He had a sea-serpent all down his back. He showed me one day.”
The Captain smiled proudly.
“Tatooed! Talk of tatooing! I'll show yer—and it isn't everybody I'd do it for neither. But I've taken a fancy to you, like my own young nipper what died.”
With an air of vast ceremony, as though he were throwing open the door to all the universe, he slowly unwound from about his neck the dark blue handkerchief, unbuttoned his coat, then a grimy shirt and displayed a wall of deep brown chest. This fine expanse had no hair upon it, but was illuminated with a superb picture of a ship in full sail against a setting sun, all worked in the most handsome of blue tatoo. Jeremy gasped. He had never dreamed that such things could be. He ventured to touch the ship with his finger, and he could feel the Captain's manly heart thumping like a muffled hammer beneath the skin.
“There's Queen Victoria on my right thigh and Nelson on my left, and the battle of Trafalgar on the middle of my back. P'raps I'll show 'em you one day. It wouldn't be decent exactly 'ere—too public. But one day you come to my little place and I'll show 'em you.”
“Will you really?” said Jeremy. “Didn't it hurt terribly?”
“Hurt!” said the Captain. “I should just think it did. I 'ad to put cotton wool behind my teeth to prevent myself from screaming. But that's nothing. What do you say to being tortured by the Caribbees natives every day after breakfast for three 'ole months. A tooth out a day—”
“But your teeth are all there,” said Jeremy.
“False,” said the Captain. “Every one of 'em. And the things they'll do to your toenails—it 'ud make your 'air creep on your 'ead to listen to the things I could tell you—”