He smiled in the darkness, a melancholy smile.
“She probably told everything to the priest, and he has explained to her satisfaction wherein I am a fool,–a malicious, blaspheming, dangerous villain, and a stupendous ass. And he is right. Perhaps, in time,–a long time,–I may 59learn that insulting people’s religion isn’t the shortest road to popularity.”
In his abstraction the hand, for an instant, was withdrawn. Solomon protested, and the attentions were resumed. “Keep still, old man, I am not going. And don’t get that chain around your legs. But she is a fine girl, Sol: too fine, perhaps. Just a little, wee bit too everlastingly high-minded and superior for ordinary dogs like us.”
While administering these pearls of wisdom the speaker had become interested in two approaching figures, dimly visible in the obscurity. As they came nearer, he saw that one, the older of the two, a man with gray chin whiskers and a blue jersey, was drunk. This man stopped, and holding the other by the arm exclaimed:
“It’s so, damn it! It’s so, I tell yer! What’s he doin’ this minute? He’s blind drunk in his cabin. Why, the jag on him would sink a man-o’-war. Oh, he’s a daisy cap’n, he is! He’s the champion navigator.”
“He’ll be all right in the mornin’.”
“All right in the mornin’! It’ll be a week! And where’ll we be to-morrer mornin’? Where are we–hic–now? God knows, and he ain’t tellin’.”
60With a maudlin gesture and a reverberating hiccup, the speaker, following the motion of the boat, pushed his friend against the wall and held him there. “I’ll tell yer where we are; we are more’n fifty miles east of where we think we are. We ain’t sighted Anticosti yet. And we ain’t goin’ to.”
The other man laughed, “Oh, shut up, Bart. You are gettin’ a jag on yerself.”
“Yes, sir! We are fifty miles too far to easterd now, and by to-morrer mornin’ it’ll be a hundred miles.”