"Will you please mind your own business?" she almost screamed; and then, crying and laughing together: "If you paid as much attention to your work as you do to—to—me, men wouldn't fall from aloft on account of rotten foot-ropes."
The abashed officer went forward, grumbling about "discipline" and "women aboard ship." When he was well out of sight in the darkness, the girl turned suddenly, passed both arms around Owen's neck, exerted a very slight pressure, patted him playfully on the shoulder as she withdrew them, and sped down the companionway.
He steered a wild course during that trick, and well deserved the profane criticism which he received from the mate.
NEEDS MUST WHEN THE DEVIL DRIVES
Hogged at bow and stern, her deck sloped at the ends like a truck's platform, while a slight twist in the old hull canted the foremast to port and the mizzen to starboard. It would be hard to know when she was on an even keel. The uneven planking, inboard and out, was scarred like a chopping-block, possibly from a former and intimate acquaintance with the coal trade. Aloft were dingy gray spars, slack hemp rigging, untarred for years, and tan-colored sails, mended with patch upon patch of lighter-hued canvas that seemed about to fall apart from their own weight. She was English-built, bark-rigged, bluff in the bow, square in the stern, unpainted and leaky—on the whole as unkempt and disreputable-looking a craft as ever flew the black flag; and with the clank of the pumps marking time to the wailing squeak of the tiller-ropes, she wallowed through the waves like a log in an eddying tideway.
Even the black flag at the gaff-end wore a makeshift, slovenly air. It was a square section of the bark's foreroyal, painted black around the skull-and-cross-bones design, which had been left the original hue of the canvas. The port-holes were equally slovenly in appearance, being cut through between stanchions with axes instead of saws; and the bulwarks were further disfigured by extra holes smashed through at the stanchions to take the lashings of the gun-breechings. But the guns were bright and cared for, as were the uniforms of the crew; for they had been lately transhipped. Far from home, with a general cargo, this ancient trader had been taken in a fog by Captain Swarth and his men an hour before their own well-found vessel had sunk alongside—which gave them just time to hoist over guns and ammunition. When the fog shifted, the pursuing English war-brig that had riddled the pirate saw nothing but the peaceful old tub ahead, and went on into the fog, looking for the other.
"Any port in a storm, Angel," remarked Captain Swarth, as he flashed his keen eyes over the rickety fabric aloft; "but we'll find a better one soon. How do the boys stand the pumping?"
Mr. Angel Todd, first mate and quartermaster, filled a black pipe before answering. Then, between the first and second deep puffs, he said: "Growlin'—dammum."
"At the work?"