“It has just gone eight bells.”
“Can’t I hear as well as you, Charley? What’s the use of bothering a fellow? Do leave me alone.”
“I only wanted to say, Tom, that the skipper said we might go ashore this afternoon if we liked, as soon as the second mate came on board; and there he is coming off in the jolly-boat now.”
“I don’t care whether Tompkins comes off or not,” replied Tom Aldridge in the same peevish tone as he had spoken at first. “What’s the good of going ashore?”
“Oh, lots of good,” said Charley Onslow more cheerily. “Better than stopping here cooped-up like a fowl and being grilled in the sun.”
“Well, I can’t see the difference between getting roasted ashore and roasted on board, for my part,” retorted Tom. “It’s six of one and half-a-dozen of the other.”
“You lazy duffer!” said Charley laughing; “you are incorrigible. But do come along with me, Tom. We haven’t landed now for two days, and I can’t stand the Muscadine any longer.”
“I suppose you’ll have your way, as you always do,” grumbled the other, turning away at last from his listless contemplation of the prospect with which he had owned himself so disgusted. “I don’t know how it is, Charley, but you seem to manage me and everybody here just as you like; you can come round the skipper even, when you set your mind to it, and that is what no one else can do!”
“You forget Mr Tompkins.”
“I don’t count him at all,” said Tom Aldridge indignantly. “He’s a sneak, and gets his way by wheedling and shoe-scraping! But you, Charley, go to work in quite a different fashion. Why, I’m hanged if you don’t cheek a fellow when you want to get something out of him. It’s your Irish impudence that does it, my boy, I expect.”