"No, no, demonio, no!" said the elder Barradas; "we must keep him alive so long as we want him. We can't physic ourselves, companeros, especially if fever comes aboard, which it is likely to do if we hug the land."
"But in physicking us he might poison the whole blessed gang," suggested the Canadian.
"No fear of that. We'll have him chained to the mainmast, and if a man dies in his hands, then el senor doctor de medicena shall be tipped overboard after the others."
"Thank you, my Spanish patrone," thought Heriot, who had listened to all this with blood that alternately boiled and curdled; "a pleasant little medical practice you are likely to find me here!"
"Mayhap that fellow, Hawkshaw, would join us?" suggested the Canadian again.
"He, the white-livered Perro!" exclaimed Pedro, "I long to have my Albacete knife between his ribs. I'll teach him to play off quarter-deck airs with me, the God-abandoned Piccaro! Well, is it agreed that, instead of letting old Phillips haul up for Table Bay, we keep the ship off the land whether he will or will not take her before we are abreast of La Tierra de Natal; hug the coast of Africa after; have a run through the Mozambique Channel, and then stand right across the Indian Sea for whatever we may overhaul?"
A unanimous clapping of very hard and very dirty hands responded heartily to this programme.
"Now, Pedro, the dados (dice)," said Zuares, impatiently.
"Yes, mates, the dice!" added the Yankee, setting his chin, which was like a shoemaker's knife, upon his knees, and clasping his hands over his ankles, so that he squatted on his hams like a huge baboon. "Hooray! the old Herminey has been trimmed by the starn since she saw Dungeness Light; but we'll trim her by the head arter we doubles the Cape—eh, mates? So now to draw lots for them two pretty creeturs, as I calculate is just agoin' to bed about this blessed time. Think o' that, mates! I'm a thorough-bred Yankee—half bull, half shark, with an uncommon cross of the snake; so I'm blowed if I can wait almost till we leave Table Bay astarn and bear up towards Natal. But rattle away, Pedro, my boy!—Captain Pedro that is to be, I reckon."
The blood of the young Scotchman grew cold as he listened, longing for a brace of loaded revolvers, that he might shoot down the whole band; but the talkative Yankee began his nasal drawling again.