And Geordie grabbed the box eagerly.
'It's heavy,' he said, 'it's tolerable heavy.'
And putting it on the rail, he opened it with the key.
There was half a brick in it.
THE ORDER OF THE WOODEN GUN
Bertie Fortescue was twenty-three, he weighed twelve stone, was rather fatter than he should have been, and wore an eyeglass. His father was good to him, his mother spoiled him, he had not been to a public school, and had never had a thrashing in his life. He believed in himself, in clothes and money, and imagined he was born to rule men. He was trying, it was for the first time, in the steamship Pilgrim of 6000 tons register, owners Fortescue and Son of Liverpool, bound from New Orleans to Cape Town with a cargo of mules and horses for the British Government. The Pilgrim was three days out from the mixed mouths of the Mississippi, and already there was the devil to pay and no pitch hot.
'Trouble, didn't I smell trouble like a gas-works?' said Bob Wadd. 'It stuck out a foot while we were lyin' at the Picayune Tier. And just as soon as I heerd old Fortescue was took sick, and that dear Bertie was goin' to come with us to manage these blighted 'orse-keepers, I knewed cyclones would be nothing to the ructions that was in sight. And look at the old man!'
He appealed to his shipmates to look, in their minds, at the skipper, and say what they thought of him. Wadd objected to Captain Scantlebury's white hair, to his meek manner, to his way of walking, which was a waddle, to his religion, to everything that was his.
'Sings 'ymns, don't 'e?' said Wadd scornfully, 'preaches, don't 'e? And don't drink neither, oh no! Reads the Pilgrim's Progress, a reg'lar child's book!'