"El espio y picaro! (spy and scoundrel)," said Pedro, grinding his teeth.
"The old corksucker!" growled the rest, using in this the most opprobrious epithet known at sea.
"He's a old man-o'-war's man, and, I reckon, has got notions o' discipline, doffing his hat to the quarter-deck, and other darned nonsense whipped into him, nigger fashion, by the boatswain's cat. To try gettin' over such fellows is summut like reefing of a stun'sail, or anythin' else that's next to useless."
Having delivered himself of this aphorism, Badger proceeded to "darn" sundry parts of Noah's person, such as his eyes and limbs, and by the unanimous vote of all he was consigned to very warm latitudes indeed.
Amid this, the ship's bell struck. It was the appointed time—four bells in the second dog-watch—and then, pale as a spectre, or looking like an evil spirit whom the sound had summoned—Cramply Hawkshaw descended through the scuttle into the little apartment, or fore-cabin, a close and squalid den, where his appearance was greeted with shouts of ironical welcome and applause, in which the watch on deck joined.
We have already detailed a scene in this unpleasant quarter of the ship; but have little desire to rehearse another, and so shall be brief.
With a mocking grimace on his moustached lip, and a ferocious gleam in his wild black eyes, Pedro presented Hawkshaw to the crew as a new companero amigo—associate and friend.
"Hitch in, mates—make room for the capting," said Badger, drawing in his long, lean, and misshapen legs. "So having 'ad a spell in limbo aft, you're bound for the bunks forward, eh? Come, Pedro, prodooce the dev'l's bones—let him have a shy with the ivories. I reckon he's got an eye on the gals aft, as well as ourselves; and I say, capting—Jeerusalem! ain't the black eyes o' that oldest gal regular Broadway shiners!"
In his misery and rage, Hawkshaw had slunk forward, and joined the crew with two ideas uppermost in his mind: that he would yet revenge himself on Morley Ashton, and might also have the haughty Ethel at his mercy—that she yet might be his, and his only, despite fate, fortune, and friends, and despite her own aversion for him.
But when he found himself among this crew of desperadoes, whose obscene lips bandied about the names of those so pure and gentle, fair and tender, as Ethel and Rose Basset, the old times of Laurel Lodge came to memory, and though bad, hardened, and desperate, Hawkshaw felt his soul die within him.