“Ho, we’re out on the chase to-night,
Cracking-on for a bloody fight—
Ye fancy men now turn again,
And follow the prey to-night.”
“What ho, shipmate!”
“Have you pistols?—very well. Come when I call, but not a moment before. Wait till you hear me say—what shall I say?—O, ‘Dead or alive,’” whispered Morgan, and slipped from the cabin.
So the old buccaneer and the young decoy-duck, dressed in the drake’s finery, set to at their victuals, Dawkins talking noisily the while.
“Now, I don’t ask—nor I haven’t never asked—for anything better than this here,” says Dawkins. “Plenty of rations and plenty of rum and a smart shipmate to keep the bottle rolling. Not that you shines in that last, cap’n, much as I admire your parts and person—no, you don’t, and it’s a sad pity. But there, I seen many a stout seaman gone to the devil by way of this same liquor, and every man to his taste, says I.”
“It’s the sober man that gets the booty, Mr Dawkins,” Morgan put in, to keep the old ruffian talking.
“But the drunk ones is the happiest,” retorted Mr Dawkins. “Look at me! I’m happy—let no one deny it. Leastways, till the liquor’s out, I wouldn’t change with kings on their golden thrones. Why, now, what a thing it is, as a man what wants so little, like me, should have so hard a job to get it—like I have. All my life it’s been the blessed same, ever since I shipped as cabin-boy out o’ Bristol city, me starving at the time. All the dirty work to do, a kick here, a clout with a marlinspike there, the cat going, knives out, provisions running short, and every man-jack with his little bit o’ luck except Dawkins, poor old Dawkins, what only wanted to sit quiet on his beam-ends and consume his victuals in due season.”