"Can't conjecture for the life of me," said he.
Dogvane now took a fresh quid, by way of gaining courage, I suppose, to enter on his embassy; and advancing a step from the rest, he cast his eyes on the deck, and began to thump one hand on another, and to mutter with his lips, as if he had been rehearsing a speech. Presently, giving his trowsers a hitch, and his quid a cruel chirt, he looked towards us, in act to advance, as it were, but his heart again failed him; so with another pull at his waistband, and a tremendous chew of his quid, which made the tobacco juice squirt from both corners of his mouth, he hove about again, apparently in despair and discomfiture, and joined the others, who instantly set up a loud laugh.
Lennox, I saw, had now slid round to the men, and with a most quizzical cast of his eye, was using his powers of persuasion with old Dogvane, to get him to weigh anchor, and set forth on his mission again; but the quartermaster shook his head, and seemed to refuse point-blank. At length, after a great deal of bother, the steward appeared to have screwed his courage to the sticking place, for he now advanced to within a couple of yards of where we stood—the group behind creeping up after him. He kept rubbing the back of his hand across his muzzle, and coughing and clearing his voice, and every now and then he took a squint over his shoulder, to see, in case his memory should fail him, that he was in immediate communication with his reserve. After another stiff mastication, and a devil of a hitch, he smoothed down his forelock, tore his hat off his head, as if it had been a divot, as Lennox might have said, and then broke ground to the following purport—
"You sees, your honour, and Mr Donovan, there—gentlemen both"—A considerable pause, during which he seemed awfully puzzled.
"I am gravelled already, Lennox," quoth he, over his shoulder.
"No, no," said Lennox, "try again, man, try again."
"May it please you, sir—it has blowed half a gale of wind some two days agone, as mayhap your honour knows"——
Lanyard could not help smiling for the soul of him. "Why, Dogvane, I have reason good to know that; but what would you be after? Come to the point, man."
"And so I would, captain, if I only knowed how to get there—I fear the point he speaks of lies in the wind's eye, and that I shan't fetch it" (aside to Lennox)—"but, as I says before, your honour, we had a sniffler some two days agone, and the parrot, Wapping Poll, your honour, why she was blown overboard, your honour; and as a parrot is not of the gull specie your honour, I fears as how poor Poll may have been drowned."
I could scarcely keep my gravity.