"He's down below," growled the sailor whom he addressed.
"Will he soon come up?"
He was answered in the affirmative.
So James lingered until the man he inquired for came up.
He was a brutal-looking man, as common in appearance as any of the sailors whom he commanded, and the boy was amazed at his bearing. Surely that man was not his ideal of a ship-captain. He thought of him as a sort of prince, but there was nothing princely about the miserable, bloated wretch before him.
Still he preferred his application.
"Do you want a new hand?" asked James.
His answer was a volley of oaths and curses that made James turn pale, for he had never uttered an oath in his life, and had never listened to anything so disgusting as the tirade to which he was forced to listen.
The Canal Boy