"I like your song less and less!"
"You've a cursed queasy stomach I think!" he hiccupped.
"And an empty one!" says I.
"'Tis a song well bethought on by—by better men nor you, for all your size!" says he, glancing at me over his bottle with a truculent eye, and though his glance was steady, I perceived the drink was affecting him more and more. "Aye, many a better man!" he nodded, frowning.
"As who?" I questioned.
"First, there's Abnegation Mings as you shall hear tell of on the Main from Panama to St. Catherine's, aye, by the horns of Nick there be none of all the coastwise Brotherhood quicker or readier when there's aught i' the wind than Abnegation, and you can lay to that, my delicate cove!"
"And who's he?"
"Myself!" Here he took another draught and nodded at me in drunken solemnity. "And look'ee, my dainty cull, when you've seen as much o' death as Abnegation Mings you'll know as Death's none so bad a thing, so long as it leaves you alone. And I for one say 'tis a good song and there's for ye!"
"And who else?"
"Well, there's Montbars as do they call the Exterminator, and there's young Harry Morgan—a likely lad, and there's Roger Tressady and Sol Aiken and Penfeather—sink him!"