For some little time after Bob and Dick got on board, both were very busy, Bob dipping overboard a bucket that had a “becket” of rope for a handle, and a longer rope bent on to this with which he proceeded to haul the bucket up again, full of sea-water, wherewith he sluiced the decks fore and aft thoroughly; while Dick, on his part, scrubbed the planks with a piece of “holystone,” then adroitly drying them with a mop, which he could twirl now, after a little experience, with all the dexterity of an old salt!
When the little cutter was thus presently made “a-taunto” by their mutual exertions, they sat down to rest for awhile, Dick sharing his luncheon of bread-and-cheese with Bob, who, of course, had long since consumed the slices of bread-and-butter he had brought out with him for his breakfast.
By and by, on a gentle breeze springing up from the southward and westward, Master Bob, boylike, suggested their slipping the Zephyr’s moorings and going for a little sail out into the offing.
“We needn’t run very far,” he said. “Say, only to the fort there and back again, you know.”
But Dick would not hear of the proposal.
“No, Master Bob, not lest the Cap’en gived orders,” he remonstrated. “Why, he’d turn me off if I did it; and, he’s that kind to me as I wouldn’t like to vex him, no not for nothing!”
“He wouldn’t mind me though,” argued Bob. “Didn’t he say the other day—why, you heard him tell Hellyer yourself—that he’d back you and me to manage a boat against any two boys in Portsmouth, aye, or any port on the south coast?”
“Ees, I heerd him,” reluctantly assented the other; “but that didn’t mean fur us to go out in the boat alone.”
“Well, Dick, I didn’t think you were a coward!” said Bob with great contempt, angry at being thwarted. “I really didn’t.”
This cut the other to the heart.