“You wanted them to throw you overboard, Timothy.”
“The divil I did—and phwat for, if not to lighten the ship in the storm? ’Tis a Jonah I would be, and three days in the belly of the whale. Man, ’twould make a taytotaler of Bacchus himself.”
He lighted a cigar of prodigious length, and fell for a while to practical observations upon the sea and sky and the ship which were of interest to none but himself. By-and-bye they would appear in the columns of the Daily Shuffler. I begged of him to be less Dantesque and more practical, and presently, becoming quite serious, he spoke of the Diamond Ship.
“Phwat the blazes does it all mean, Ean me bhoy? A ship in such a hurry that she fires a shot at ye for looking at her. Larry has told me the story, and, by me sowl, ’tis astonishing. When I return to London next month——”
“You are contemplating a return then, Timothy?”
“Faith, would ye have so much ganius buried in the Doldrums?”
“We shall have to pick up a liner and put you aboard,” said I.
He set his cup down with a bang and looked at me as though I had done him an injury.
“’Tis to the British Isles ye are bound. Would ye deny it?”
“I do deny it, Timothy. We are bound to the Island of Santa Maria in the Azores.”