“No, but really, Jack, what is it you’re laughing at?” asked Armstrong. “If there is a joke you might as well let us have the benefit of laughing along wi’ you, for we stand much in need of something to cheer us here.”
“Well, Billy boy, I may as well make a clean breast of it,” said Molloy, raising himself on one elbow and becoming grave. “I do confess to feelin’ raither ashamed o’ myself, but you mustn’t be hard on me, lads, for circumstances alters cases, you know, as Solomon said—leastwise if it warn’t him it was Job or somebody else. The fact is, I’ve bin shammin’, mates!”
“Shamming!”
“Ay, shammin’ weak. Purtendin’ that I was shaky on the legs, an’ so not quite up to the cargo they were puttin’ aboard o’ me.”
“If what you’ve been doing means shamming weak, I’d like to see you coming out strong,” observed Miles, with a short laugh.
“Well, p’r’aps you’ll see that too some day,” returned the sailor, with an amiable look.
“But do you really mean that all that groaning—which I confess to have been surprised at—was mere pretence?”
“All sham. Downright sneakin’!” said Molloy. “The short an’ the long of it is, that I see’d from the first the on’y way to humbug them yellow-faced baboons was to circumwent ’em. So I set to work at the wery beginnin’.”
“Ah, by takin’ a header,” said Simkin, “into one o’ their bread-baskets!”
“No, no!” returned the seaman, “that, I confess, was a mistake. But you’ll admit, I’ve made no more mistakes o’ the same sort since then. You see, I perceived that, as my strength is considerable above the average, the baboons would be likely to overload me, so, arter profound excogitation wi’ myself, I made up my mind what to do, an’ when they had clapped on a little more than the rest o’ you carried I began to groan, then I began to shake a bit in my timbers, an’ look as if I was agoin’ to founder. It didn’t check ’em much, for they’re awful cruel, so I went fairly down by the head. I had a pretty fair guess that this would bring the lash about my shoulders, an’ I was right, but I got up wery slowly an’ broken-down-like, so that the baboons was fairly humbugged, and stopped loadin’ of me long afore I’d taken in a full cargo—so, you see, boys, I’ve bin sailin’ raither light than otherwise.”