“They’re modest, merry creatures. Very kind, simple creatures. Another thing. They’re strong as colts. You see, they do most of the work. They’ll carry a man like you. I guess you’re one and a half hundred-weight. They’d carry you across a swamp. And they’re only very small, you know. As for fun, I don’t know what you mean.”
“Cammock, the chaste pirate.”
“Now go easy, Mr. Stukeley. I can take a lot, but I don’t take pirate of any man.”
“The virgin martyr.”
“We had one of our men a martyr, Mr. Stukeley. He tried to have a bit of ‘fun,’ as you call it, with one of the Samballoes women. Lemuel Bath his name was. They caught him, as it happened. And they done to him what they do to each other, if they try any ‘fun’ and get caught. That was ashore on the Main at the back of Sasardi there. I was ashore the next day, filling water at the ’Seniqua. We seen Bath come crippling down the beach, with his head back, and his hands tearing his chest all bloody. Tearing his chest into strips with pain. Naked, too. He died that evening. No, sir. Don’t you try it.”
“Thanks. Niggers aren’t in my line. I leave them to pirates.”
“That’s you. It’s time I was on deck, Mr. Stukeley. Adios, señor. Divertiete. That’s what we used to say to the Spaniards when their ransoms were paid.” He nodded to the head which watched him from the bunk. Turning on his heel, he passed from the cabin, pressing his thumb upon his pipe to kill the ember in the bowl. “I wonder if there’s many like him,” he said to himself. “I wonder what it is makes him like that. I’d like him in a watch. Oh, mommer.” As he muttered thus, in passing to the deck, Stukeley turned in his bunk, drawing the curtain. “Hulking boor,” he said to himself. “Hulking old savage. This is the sort of company we keep when we come to sea. Crusty he gets, when you bait him.” He thought of the little golden city and of the little brown women, with resolve to try them both. “Good luck,” he said; “I hope we’ll soon get out of here, before Olivia’s nerves go off again.” As he settled himself down for his nap he was roused by a noise in the sample-room, where Mr. Harthop broke in a caskhead with a tomahawk. He went to the alleyway-door to call down the passage to Margaret’s cabin.
“Margaret,” he cried, “can’t you stop that beastly noise for a bit? Olivia’s lying down.”
“I am sorry,” said Margaret, coming from his cabin. “I ought to have—— Mr. Harthop, will you please unhead your casks on deck? The noise upsets Mrs. Stukeley. Apologize for me, Stukeley.”
The noise ceased, and Stukeley slept like an infant, showing his strong white teeth in a smile. Harthop muttered and swore, wishing that a ship with a woman in her might sail the rivers of hell; for that was all she was fit for. He reproved the man who was working with him for suggesting the tomahawk. The man sulked and loafed for the rest of the afternoon, and then told a sympathetic fo’c’s’le that you got your head bit off if that pale judy in the cabin heard you so much as “hem.” Harthop, nursing his wrath till knock-off time, took it out of the boy who kept his cabin clean.