"We're overhauling her hand over hand, anyhow," suggested Green.
"If I can pass him going two foot for his one, I'd run the Simoom under," screamed the skipper. "And when we come up with him, if my voice in a trumpet can carry, I'll tell him what I think of him. He thinks I'm soft because I sing hymns on Sunday. I'll let him know before I sang hymns I was the biggest tough on the Australian coast. God's truth I was! And I wish I was now—oh, how I wish it, and him ashore with me!"
And Green believed it, because he had to! There was something in the old man's eye as he walked to and fro, an unregenerate blood-thirsty snap, that was very convincing. So the reefs were shaken out of the topsails, and even that did not satisfy the skipper.
"I'll let him know that a saved and repentant Christian isn't necessary a worm," said Banks. "Mr. Green, set the mainsail!"
The Simoom was snoring through it now, and Green stared.
"What she can't carry she may drag," said the skipper, with flashing eyes.
And the Simoom lost her courtesy with the sea under the influence of the mainsail, for the monsoon was a stiff one. She shouldered the Indian Ocean aside like a policeman shoving through a crowd; she scooped up tons of it as a scraper team scoops sand, and ran at any extra sea like a bull at a hedge. The men were under the break of the t'gallant foc'sle, sheltering from the cataract. They knew the Palembang was ahead, and were as eager as the skipper to overhaul her. Through the bos'on and his mate it had leaked out that the old man was keen for a palaver with Spiller.
"He's like a bull whale in a flurry," said one who had been whaling. "Now my notion is that the skipper kin blaspheme if he wants to."
The Palembang was visibly herself and no other vessel by this time, and she carried all she could stand.
"I've half a notion to have the t'gall'n-sails set," said Banks, looking up aloft. "And if we weren't overhauling her twenty-three to the dozen, damme, but I would!"