"How I'd like to have one of 'em under a big palm-tree in some snug diggin' on the Africy coast, or in a wigwam on the Mozambique, thatched with leaves, no topsails to reef o' nights, and nothin' to do all day, but keep on admiring her, and swigging the grog old Phillips has aboard, or blowing a whiff of 'baccy—eh, mates? Jeerusalem! that's summut like life, I calculate!"
"Morte de Dios!" swore Pedro Barradas, with a very dark look; "haul in your slack, and be hanged to you! There are other things than the two girls worth casting lots for!"
"Is there really, now?" drawled Badger. I was looking into the senoras' cabin the other night, and saw them going to bed. I saw lovely necks and shoulders, and all that; but I saw more, I can tell you, companeros."
"Smite my timbers!" "Shiver my tawpsails!" "Darn my eyes!" "Oh, Jeerusalem!" And "What did you see?" asked several all at once.
"A splendid jewel-case," replied the Spaniard, while an avaricious gleam sparkled in his dark eyes; "a box with diamond rings for the ears and fingers; carbuncles, turquoises, and topazes, in bracelets and necklets, all glittering on the trays of blue and crimson velvet. So he who loses the girls should have a chance——"
"Of grabbing the jewels," interrupted Badger; "in course he should—in course!"
"Jewels or not," said Zuares Barradas, laughing, while he rolled up a fresh cigarito, "I'll teach one senora, at least, that it is no longer here mira y no totas, as they say in Minorca."
"Which means, in your cussed lingo?" asked Bolter.
"Look at me, but touch me not!" replied the young Spaniard, with a grin.
"I'm rayther pertik'lar," observed Mr. Badger, "and I might do neither one nor t'other, if I wor in Minorky."