“Come out here, and I will tell you.”
Gregory led the way to the port side of the deck, and hauled his friend into a corner where he could speak to him without interruption. But suddenly he seemed to change his mind, and conducted him to the mess-room, which was not occupied at this time. Taking from its hiding-place in the bottom of a locker one of the bottles of Burgundy, he filled a couple of glasses from it; and the cronies tossed them off quite as a matter of course, as though it were a part of the regular routine of the vessel. Neither of them spoke a word, for each understood the other without any speeches.
“I object to the present order of things on board,” said Gregory, when he had restored the bottle to its hiding-place, and rinsed the glasses so that no telltale odor should betray him. “I am not going in to the recitations.”
“Then there will be a row,” added Clinch lightly, as though it were of no particular consequence if there should be a tempest on board.
“I don’t care if there is: in fact, I should rather like a little excitement,” added Gregory. “I don’t feel at home on board of this craft. I have been snubbed half a dozen times by O’Hara since I came into the steamer.”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
“I am not going into the cabin to the recitations, in the first place.”
“But you will have to fight that out with Capt. Fairfield, and not with O’Hara,” suggested Clinch. “He is the schoolmaster of the ship.”
“I don’t care whom I fight it out with. I feel that I have been a good boy about as long as it will pay. It looks to me just as though we had come to the end of our service in the Josephine.”
“But we shall return to her.”