"When did you take them?"
"Last night. Oh, they're fresh enough, if that's what you're thinkin' of. Don't you want to try 'em?"
"What is the price?"
"Ten cents a bushel; that's what we ought'er get up to Baltimore, an' I reckon we might knock off a little if we don't have to run there to unload."
Then, without waiting for permission, Darius began giving us fool orders intended to get the pungy under way, and we came lumbering around under the ship's starboard, where we could have been blown into the next world with no more labor than the lighting of a match.
Darius lifted one of the hatches and leaped into the hold ordering us to "bear a hand lively that the gentlemen might taste the oysters," and passing up a basket full, shouting to me so loudly that he could readily have been heard on the ship:
"Pass 'em over the side, Bubby dear, an' be careful how you fool 'round the rail!"
I should have laughed at his manner of speaking but that I knew he was playing a part, and I did my best to obey the command.
The sailors of the ship, eager for anything by way of a change of food, held out both hands invitingly for the fish, and I contrived to swing the basket aboard.
Then it was that I saw an officer take charge of the fish, calling for the after steward to come forward, and a moment later some one cried: