“Hallo!” he said. “What’s the matter with your face, boy?”
“I dunno,” replied my late antagonist, trying vainly to hide the effects of my fists with the sleeve of his blue jumper. “S’pose I run agin summat a-comin’ downstairs jest now!”
The sun, though, streaming down through the open hatchway, handicapped all the yokel’s attempts of concealment; and Mr Brown looked at him with a quizzical expression on his face and a comical twinkle in his eye that spoke a volume without words!
“It strikes me, young man,” he said, with his broad good-humoured grin, “that theer ‘summat’ you knocked against must have been moving round you pretty smart! Bless me, if it ain’t fetched you one on your booby hatch and another on the conk, and bottled up your peepers as well! What’s your name, boy?”
“Mo—ses,” drawled out ‘Ugly’ slowly, the poor beggar having a difficulty in speaking, caused by the blow I first gave him on the mouth, which accentuated his provincial pronunciation, “Re—eeks, zur.”
“Oh!” ejaculated ship’s corporal Brown. “Then, Mr Moses Reeks, you’d better go to the sick-bay and see the doctor.”
‘Ugly’ backed down the hatchway to comply with this order, as we were just then ascending from the middle deck; and, from his withdrawing his intervening figure, I became disclosed to view.
My arm, which had swollen up, and necessitated my putting it in a sling, at once attracted the observation of the corporal.
“I say, youngster,” he said, arresting my footsteps in like fashion, “why are you bandaged up? What the—ah, what does this hanky-panky mean?”
“I—I—I,” I stammered, not knowing what to reply to this, as I did not like to tell him a barefaced lie in cold blood offhand— “I’ve hurt my arm, sir.”