“There,” exclaimed Gillis, “I knew there was something I forgot! What we goin’ to do about eatin’? There’s no grub aboard this one.”
“None at all? How d’y’ know?”
“Oh, I been below.”
“Trust you. At eatin’ or watchin’ out for seas you’re a certificated master. ‘Here’s one I think is comin’ aboard,’ he says the other day, and she high as Mount Shasta ’most, and comin’ like a railroad train. And so no grub, eh? Well, the Skipper’ll have to manage some way to heave some aboard. But quit your conversational chattin’ now and keep pumpin’—and you others go to choppin’. Slack up, and the first thing you know this one’ll go down—plumb! like a rock—and then where’ll we be?”
“And our salvage, Sam—where’d that be, too, hah?”
“That’s so, our salvage. And ’tisn’t only salvage, but we want to show that tug-boat crowd, and those bark people that cast her off, that we c’n get her home. But how’s the pumps? Three thousand strokes yet? Isn’t that the devil, though? And ice enough aboard yet to make a winter’s crop for one of them Boston companies with the fleet of yellow wagons, yes. But keep to it, fellows, and by’n’by we’ll see about grub.”
Later, Sam paid out a long line, which Crump took aboard the Buccaneer and attached to a great hunk of beef, wrapped in four thicknesses of oilskins, and a can of hot coffee, tightly stoppered. The beef reached the bark somewhat cooled, but in bulk entire. As to the can, the stopper was buffeted out of that, and only salt water was there when Sam hauled it in.
“Now what d’y’ think of that, Skipper?”
“That’s the devil, ain’t it? But better luck next time.”
“Lord, I hope so!”