And Billy went back to Tom.
"He's fair luny, that's what he is. But if he reckons I'm goin' to the calaboose for him, he'll run up agin a snag."
And presently Smith came out to breakfast with a face as black as a near cyclone. Billy and Tom jumped when he spoke, and all those men in his house who were in a lee shore, as regards dollars, got away from him and adorned a neighbouring fence.
"What's wrong wiv Shang'ai?" asked a Londoner; "'es a black 'un, but I never seed 'im so rorty as this!"
And no one answered him. They were a sick crowd at any time, and now, when their slave-owner roared, their hearts were in their boots.
But Smith was only trying to keep up his own courage. Not once, but many times since he had got even with the man who had given him a thrashing, he had regretted his method of revenge.
"I'd best have bashed him and left him laying on the Front," said Smith, "and here's Tom and Bill know the whole racket. I've half a mind to have them put out of the way. In such a place as this, who can a man trust? Bah, it sickens me, it does. It fair sickens me."
He was virtuously indignant with an ungrateful world. Even his revenge had been a failure. How in the name of all that was holy and unholy had the admiral managed to rise from the foc'sle to the command of the California?
"And I thought Blaker and Simpson was both men!" said Smith with disgust. "There ain't any trustin' to appearances, nor to reputation neither. But how could the swine have done it?"
An early evening paper had the whole story, and as Shanghai was still up town, all his crowd of crimps and slaves roared over the yarn.