“Ain't you going to give them a hand with the sail?” asked Jimmy.
“No. If six ov 'em ain't 'nough beef to set that blamed, rotten spanker, they ain't fit to live,” answered Donkin in a bored, far-away voice, as though he had been talking from the bottom of a hole. Jimmy considered the conical, fowl-like profile with a queer kind of interest; he was leaning out of his bunk with the calculating, uncertain expression of a man who reflects how best to lay hold of some strange creature that looks as though it could sting or bite. But he said only:—“The mate will miss you—and there will be ructions.”
Donkin got up to go. “I will do for 'im some dark night; see if I don't,” he said over his shoulder.
Jimmy went on quickly:—“You're like a poll-parrot, like a screechin' poll-parrot.” Donkin stopped and cocked his head attentively on one side. His big ears stood out, transparent and veined, resembling the thin wings of a bat.
“Yuss?” he said, with his back towards Jimmy.
“Yes! Chatter out all you know—like... like a dirty white cockatoo.”
Donkin waited. He could hear the other's breathing, long and slow; the breathing of a man with a hundredweight or so on the breastbone. Then he asked calmly:—“What do I know?”
“What?... What I tell you... not much. What do you want... to talk about my health so...”
“It's a blooming imposyshun. A bloomin', stinkin', first-class imposyshun—but it don't tyke me in. Not it.”
Jimmy kept still. Donkin put his hands in his pockets, and in one slouching stride came up to the bunk.