'I calls all freemen with a clarion voice, to say nothin' of a bugle, to rise and put him down,' said Arizona. 'We can endure much, and can endure it long. But the worm turns at last, and dear Bertie is doomed. Boys, who is doomed?'
'Dear Bertie,' said the crowd; 'dear Bertie is doomed!'
'He is doomed to have his gun taken from him, and his eyeglass, if the Major won't have it, shall be destroyed by the heel of freedom. Boys, I have done.'
'Bully for you,' said the Major, 'I'll take the eyeglass.'
And the ingenious orator went on deck with his fellow-conspirators to take the evening air, and commune with the genial and gentlemanly stokers. The cinder-shifters owned with much amazement that the most promising Whitechapel hero with the fire-rake was not a patch on the chief ruffians from Louisiana and Texas. They admired Arizona wonderfully, were marvellously civil to Ben Wilkins, who was a murderous devil in his heart, and sat at the feet of 'Mizzoura' Jack and Seth Graves, his partner. Neither of them could go back to Missouri, and they said they didn't want to. At least Jack said so. Seth was as silent as a cemetery.
'I've a notion,' said Arizona, when he was through his second pipe, 'I've a notion as it'll be best to decorate Bertie for his doin's hyar.'
'I'd decorate him with a bowie, but for you're sayin' you'll regard it as a favour if I don't,' said Ben Wilkins.
'You're ever too ready with the knife, my son,' said Arizona, 'but if you'll stand aside with me I'll furnish your barren and uninventive genius with a harmless job for your weepon, that you keep in your boot, which will amuse Bertie worse than wounds. Let's climb up on what these gentlemen from the fiery depths calls the fiddley deck, and I'll breathe an elegant scheme into your starboard earhole, which is ship's palaver for right ear.'
They climbed up, and presently Ben climbed down and went hunting for a piece of board.
'Ter-morrer is the fatal day,' said Arizona. 'Jokin' will be the death of me. But oh, dear Bertie would almost make Seth Graves smile, and as for me who was born with a rich endowment of fun, I kin no more keep off him than a bear off honey.'