“Now where did they blow in from a night like this?” Mulligan Jacobs complained.
“You’ve got a tongue in your mouth,” Mr. Pike snarled. “Why ain’t you asked ’em?”
“As though you didn’t know I could use the tongue in me mouth, you old stiff,” Jacobs snarled back.
But it was no time for their private feud. Mr. Pike turned on the dreaming new-comers and addressed them in the mangled and aborted phrases of a dozen languages such as the world-wandering Anglo-Saxon has had every opportunity to learn but is too stubborn-brained and wilful-mouthed to wrap his tongue about.
The visitors made no reply. They did not even shake their heads. Their faces remained peculiarly relaxed and placid, incurious and pleasant, while in their eyes floated profounder dreams. Yet they were human. The blood of their injuries stained them and clotted on their clothes.
“Dutchmen,” snorted Mr. Pike, with all due contempt for other breeds, as he waved them to make themselves at home in any of the bunks.
Mr. Pike’s ethnology is narrow. Outside his own race he is aware of only three races: niggers, Dutchmen, and Dagoes.
Again our visitors proved themselves human. They understood the mate’s invitation, and, glancing first at one another, they climbed into three top-bunks and closed their eyes. I could swear the first of them was asleep in half a minute.
“We’ll have to clean up for’ard, or we’ll be having the sticks about our ears,” the mate said, already starting to depart. “Get the men along, Mr. Mellaire, and call out the carpenter.”