They tacked up the Lake under a stiff northeaster, which gave Jawn plenty of practice in attending properly to the “stays.” When they prepared to put about and came back the wind dropped to a light breeze. So they slipped along leisurely, taking over an hour to round Bluff Point. During this time of lazy inactivity Jawn, relieved of his duties, found his voice. He sang songs, offered connundrums, stories and impromptu limericks. Several times during his chat he had forgotten himself and called Richard by another name. Walter became alert. When it had happened more than once, he spoke up.
“Tryin’ to work me, are you?” he asked, “like you do the women?”
Jawn did not see the point and asked him what in the name of the seven devils he meant. Jawn Galloway could be a very belligerent fellow at times.
“Oh, nothin’; on’y them names don’t fool me.” Walter modified his tone discreetly; one could easily take the spirit out of him. “I know he ain’t Richard, and I know he ain’t the other one, either.”
“But I am the ‘other one,’ Walter,” Richard soothed him.
“Like hell y’are!”
“Hey!” cried Jawn, searching about for a weapon. “Drop that Billy Sunday talk or I’ll lam you over the head with a——” he kicked about among several tools lying at his feet—“where the blazes do you keep your marlin-spikes? Have to have a marlin-spike. If I were on land, now, I’d knock you down with my fist or just kick you in the stomach, but the etiquette of the sea demands marlin-spikes. What sort of a ship do you call this?”
Walter did not know whether to be amused or scared. Jawn could roar like Bottom, the weaver. But he decided, finally, that the situation was not as perilous as it sounded.
“He’s a big gun, he is—that fellow,” he went on, with his thought on the name. “But you ain’t.”
“He has heard of my father, Jawn.” Richard turned quickly. “You know I wrote you that he knew; he found one of my cards on the steamer. The name was familiar to him, naturally; but he did not know that father and I had the same names; and he did not know of father’s death.”