"I'm wondering whether Spiller came up this way, now," said old Banks presently, with an interrogative cock of his head.
"And not by the channel?" asked Green.
Banks turned about.
"Mr. Green, may the Lord forgive me, but I just hate that Spiller with an unholy hatred. Every time he gets a show he brags he's run right over where I located my rocks, and not only that, but criss-cross in the latitude where they might be. And he set about that he'd herring-boned a course on the chart on the longitude, going back and forth on it like a dog in a turnip field. So now he'll be up here again to have another shy for it. If he saw 'em, he'd swear he never. And why he hates me so I can't tell, unless it was I did my duty once, and let him know what a God-fearing man thought of a blasphemer."
Green nodded.
"That's likely it, sir."
"So it is, so it is," cried Banks pensively; "he has no grace in him, and he set it about, I know, that I soak at sea if I'm sober ashore. He said my rocks were delirium tremens; and I'm a discredited man, wounded in a tender spot."
It was just four bells in the forenoon watch then, and soon after they snugged her down, as the wind was very heavy in puffs and the sky low and dark. Just before eight bells Green spotted a vessel on the starboard bow, and called the old man. He came on deck like a whiteheaded Jack-in-the-Box.
"Keep her away," he cried. "I'll bet she's the Palembang. Shake out them reefs and hoist the main-t'gall'n's'l again."
His grammar failed in excitement.