“There's no use talkin',” he observed, “we've got to have a steward aboard this craft.”
“Yes,” said Captain Perez emphatically, “a steward or a woman.”
“A WOMAN!” exclaimed Captain Eri. Then he shook his head solemnly and added, “There, Jerry! What did I tell you? M'lissy!”
But Captain Perez did not smile.
“I ain't foolin',” he said; “I mean it.”
Captain Jerry thought of the spick-and-span days of his wife, dead these twenty years, and sighed again. “I s'pose we might have a housekeeper,” he said.
“Housekeeper!” sneered Captain Eri. “Who'd you hire? Perez don't, seemin'ly, take to M'lissy, and there ain't nobody else in Orham that you could git, 'less 'twas old A'nt Zuby Higgins, and that would be actin' like the feller that jumped overboard when his boat sprung a leak. No, sir! If A'nt Zuby ships aboard here I heave up MY commission.”
“Who said anything about A'nt Zuby or housekeepers either?” inquired Captain Perez. “I said we'd got to have a woman, and we have. One of us 'll have to git married, that's all.”
“MARRIED!” roared the two in chorus.
“That's what I said, married, and take the others to board in this house. Look here now! When a shipwrecked crew's starvin' one of 'em has to be sacrificed for the good of the rest, and that's what we've got to do. One of us has got to git married for the benefit of the other two.”