“That’s as mean a piece of business as I ever heard of, and if I can find out who is responsible for it, I’ll pay him back, see if I don’t! It’s an outrage! and—”
“Steady, lad! Steady!” interrupted Jalap Coombs. “Your trouble’s all over now, and there ain’t no use kicking it into life again. As my friend old Kite Roberson uster say—”
“Oh, hang Kite Robinson!” cried Phil.
“So, now! So! What did poor old Kite ever do to you that ye should want to hang him? ’Tain’t right to speak so onrespectful agin them as is older than you be, and ’twon’t do no good nuther. As my old friend uster offen say, ‘Ef ye kick a trouble, it’ll kick back, but there ain’t no trouble in the world kin stand up agin a good broad grin.’ So jest ye give a grin ’stead of a kick, and ye’ll feel all right.”
Phil could not help laughing at the very homeliness of this advice, and with that laugh his recent experience did really begin to look as much like a joke—though a rather serious one, to be sure—as an outrage. In another moment he was following Jalap Coombs into the cabin, where Captain Duff and the two other hunters were already seated at supper.
How warm and bright and cosey the cabin did seem! Phil wondered how he could have thought it dingy and stuffy. How good it was to see a bountifully provided table once more, and people! He even felt an almost friendly feeling towards the captain, whose broad red face loomed above one end of the table.
“Hello, Ryder!” roared that individual. “Too bad ye was left out in that boat so long, but fact is I’ve been turned in all the afternoon, and I neglected to mention it to Mr. Coombs when he went on watch. The wust of it to me would have been the missing of my dinner; but I don’t suppose you minded that, seeing as ye ain’t pertickerler ’bout eating noway.”
“The worst of it was that as a plug was out of the boat, I had to bail nearly all the time to keep her from swamping,” replied Phil.
“Sho, now! That so? Waal, it give ye something to do, and kep’ ye from idleness, which some folks finds mighty hard to stand. I don’t mind it much myself, but then we ain’t all made alike.”
Phil was too busy eating to make any reply to this, and at the same time he was wondering if a new cook had been found to take Ebenezer’s place. Certainly nothing he had previously eaten on board the Seamew had tasted half so good as that supper.