"Couldn't help it, you young monkey!"
Noddy was disposed at first to resent this highly improper language; but one scrap at a time was quite enough, and he wisely concluded not to notice the offensive remark.
"I'm not used to having any man speak to me in that kind of a way," added Noddy, rather tamely.
"You are not in a drawing-room! Do you think the cap'n is going to take his hat off to the cabin-boy?" replied the mate, indignantly.
"I don't ask him to take his hat off to me. He spoke to me as if I was a dog."
"That's the way officers do speak to men, whether it is the right way or not; and if you can't stand it, you've no business here."
"I didn't know they spoke in that way."
"It's the fashion; and when man or boy insults an officer as you did the captain, he always knocks him down; and serves him right too."
Noddy regarded the mate as a very reasonable man, though he swore abominably, and did not speak in the gentlest tones to the men. He concluded, therefore, that he had made a blunder, and he desired to get out of the scrape as fast as he could. The mate explained to him sundry things, in the discipline of a ship, which he had not before understood. He said that when sailors came on board of a vessel they expected more or less harsh words, and that it was highly impudent, to say the least, for a man to retort, or even to be sulky.
"Captain McClintock is better than half of them," he added; "and if the men do their duty, they can get along very well with him."