“See here now, Jesus-Maria, mind yourself. I’ll clear your launch and you too, in my own time. I’m captain in this gang, and I’m going to be it.”
“You are not capitan-a in my launch. I am. And if you not get-a out the stuff, I not-a stay.”
Douglas, the sloucher, came forward again, not addressing either Jesus-Maria or O’Brien, but the men.
“Come on, boys,” he said, “we’ve still got some of these dam’ medical comforts to sling ashore.”
“We’ll get the stuff ashore, when we’ve finished this enquiry,” O’Brien said. “I want to know about this man.” He turned again to Sard. “What are you?” he asked. “A Protestant?”
“Yes, thank God.”
The men cheered Sard for this, not because they were Protestants, but because O’Brien was not. One of the men, who had taken no part whatever in the court of enquiry, but had been sitting on some pit props drinking from a bottle, now came up to Sard and shook his hand.
“Shake hands,” he said, “if you’re a Protestant. You belong to a blurry fine religion, if you’re a Protestant. I’m not, if you understand what I mean, a Protestant myself, if you understand what I mean, but I do believe in crissen berrel, which is as near as the next, if you understand what I mean.”
“Come along, George,” Douglas said, “we’ll get this medical comfort ashore and then we’ll have one long cool one on the house.”
“Are you a Protestant?” George asked.