The mate made a curious quick grimace and sat forthwith. "Shove off," ordered the captain.
Johnny Cos, the yellow, woolly-haired boatman, plying his oars, sat perforce in face of his passengers and close to them. He would have preferred it otherwise; there had been something in the mate's face which daunted him. He glanced at it again furtively as he pulled away from the square-sterned American schooner which had ridden over the bar in the twilight of dawn and anchored, spectral and strange, in Beira Harbor. The mate's face was strong and sunburnt, the face of a man of lively passions and crude emotions; but as he sat gazing forth at the little hectic town across the smooth harbor, it had a cast of profound and desperate unhappiness. Johnny Cos had not words to tell himself what he saw; he only knew, with awe and a certain amount of fear, that he moved in the presence of something tragic.
"James," began the captain again.
The mate withdrew his miserable eyes from the scene. "What?"
"There ain't any reason why" began the captain, and paused and Hooked doubtfully upon the faithful Johnny Cos. "D'you speak English?"
"Yes, sar," replied Johnny, ingratiatingly. "You want good 'otel, Cap'n? Good, cheap 'otel? I geeve you da card; 'Otel Lisbon, sar. All cap'n go there."
"No," said the captain shortly. "We can talk better when we get ashore, James," he added to the mate.
"Ver' good 'otel, Cap'n; ver' cheap" coaxed Johnny Cos. "You want fruit, Cap'n: mango, banan', coconut, orange, grenadeel, yes? I geeve you da card, Cap'n ver' cheap!"
"That'll do," said the captain. "I don't want anything. Get a move on this boat o' yours, will you?"
Johnny Cos sighed and resigned himself to row in silence, only murmuring at intervals: "'Otel Lisbon; good, ver' good, an' cheap!" When that murmur, taking courage to grow audible, drew the mate's eye upon him, he stopped short in the middle of it and murmured no more.