"'Don't answer back your betters, sir,' said I. 'I suppose you think you're a very superior cargo, but, if the underwriters ask my opinion, I shall tell 'em I consider you a blanked inferior one. Get down there to leeward, where you belong!'"
"Was he handsome, Uncle, that young supercargo of yours?"
"Well, not so's you'd notice it after I'd finished with him. It's astonishing how soon he lost his good looks.—I tell you, Jones, it's all because of the rhyme. That's all poetry's written for. Facts are not accounted of at all. Rainbow at night, sailor's delight; rainbow at morning, take warning. Did you ever hear such stuff?"
"What became of the supercargo?" asked Cynthia, who had listened, much interested. "I suppose you took off his head or something, Uncle. You are so fierce." She laid her hand on the old man's back and patted his shoulder gently.
"No, but his father took mine off. He was half owner, and I didn't sail for him any more after that trip. There was another idiot with me along in '9. If you wanted a proof that all the fools were not dead yet, there you had it. It was along back in '9, as I said. I was going from Australia to Singapore. We were running down our Easting, making very fine weather. He comes to me one morning, and he says to me, 'Cap'n, the cyclone is upon us!'
"'Oh, it is,' says I. 'I suppose you got that out of your poetry book. Do you know that our Cook's half black, Mister Superior Cargo?'
"'No, sir, I haven't seen him yet. Is he, indeed?' says the fellow, with great interest. 'I never heard of one like that. Where do they come from?'
"'From the galley,' says I.
"Just then Cook brought me some of the men's mess to taste.
"'You said he was half black, sir,' said the supercargo, looking in the man's coal-black face.