But, Mr Meldrum saw it.
“You’ll have some more trouble yet from that fellow!” said he to the captain, relating what he had seen and telling how Moody looked.
“Pooh!” exclaimed the captain. “He’s only a bully and a lazy grumbler; and all bullies and grumblers are curs at heart!”
“Ah,” said the other, “but those sort of sneaking chaps are just as likely to knife you as not when your back’s turned, though they would be afraid to face you pluckily, like a man.”
“Let him knife away,” replied Captain Dinks. “That is, if I give him the chance! I fancy he’ll remember that little tap I gave him just now; and if he gives me any occasion for it he shall have another!” The skipper then went away laughing, but Mr Meldrum, from the vindictive look he had seen on the man’s face did not think it a laughing matter at all.
Chapter Seventeen.
The Barrier Reef.
As the light increased, the land in front could be seen more distinctly rising steadily out of the seal with the high elevated peak in the centre which Mr Meldrum had identified the day before as the Mount Ross marked on the chart. The mountain, however, showed now on the port bow; so, the ship must necessarily have run down a considerable portion of the western coast, after they had abandoned the idea of weathering the island on the port tack—which they had done as soon as they were alarmed by the sound of breakers, letting her drive to leeward—before the collision with the berg. This was a discovery which did not appear to give Mr Meldrum much satisfaction.