"'Ullo, Dan," he greeted him.
"Hullo, Bill," responded Dan. "I bin talkin' to the Dago."
"Oh, 'ave yer?" said Bill.
"Yes," said Dan, in the same conversational tone. "I have. An' now
I'm goin' to have a word with you. Stand clear of that deckhouse!"
"Eh?" cried Bill. "Say, Dan—"
That was all. Dan's fist, the right one, of the hue and hardness of teak, with Dan's arm behind it, arrived just under his eye, and the rest of the conversation was yelps. No one attempted to interrupt; even the captain and mate, who watched from the poop, made no motion to interfere; Dan's reputation for uprightness stood him in good stead.
"There, now," he said, when it was over, and he allowed the gasping, bleeding Cockney to fall back on the hatch. "See what comes of not takin' hints?"
They made Mozambique upon the morning of a day when the sun poured from the heavens and the light wind came warm off the land. The old Anna Maria, furling sail by sail, floated up to her anchorage and let go her anchors just as a shore-boat, manned by big nearly naked negroes, with a white man sitting in the stern, raced up alongside. In less than an hour the hands were lifting the anchors again and getting ready to go to sea once more. The cook, who had served the captain and his visitor with breakfast, was able to explain the mystery. He stood at his galley door, with his cloth cap cocked sportively over one eye, and gave the facts to the inquisitive sailors.
"That feller in the boat was th' agent," he said. "A Porchuguee, he was. Wanted wine f'r 'is breakfus'. An' the orders is, we're to go down the coast to a place called le'me see, now. What was it called? Some Dago name that I can't call to mind."
Dan was among his hearers, and by some freak of memory the name of the town of which the Dago had been used to speak, the town which was now a dream to be forgotten, came to his lips. He spoke it aloud.