'Oh, please, please don't,' cried Mary Watchett in great distress.
'I thought you were a gentleman,' said Connie Ryder.
'Not you,' replied Watchett, 'you never, and you know it. I'm not one, and never hankered to be. I'm rough and tough, and a seaman of the old school. I'm no sea dandy. I'm Jack Watchett, as plain as you like.'
'You're much plainer than I like,' retorted his cousin's wife; 'very much plainer.'
And though she kissed Mary Watchett, she wondered greatly how any woman could kiss Mary Watchett's husband.
'If I ever get a chance,' she said. 'But there, how can I?'
She wept a little out of pure anger as she returned to the Star of the South. When she got on board she found the mate and second mate standing by the gangway.
'Is there no chance of those men, Mr. Semple?'
'No more than if it was the year '49, and this was San Francisco,' said the mate, who was a hoary-headed old sea-dog, a great deal more like the old school than 'plain Jack Watchett.'
'Why doesna' the captain take the Greeks, ma'am?' asked M'Gill, the second mate, who had been almost long enough out of Scotland to forget his own language.