"Silence!" exclaimed the captain, suddenly, in a voice of thunder.
Few men would have ventured to disobey the command given by such a man, but John Bumpus was one of those few. He did indeed remain silent for two seconds, but it was the silence of astonishment.
"Capting," said he, seriously, "I don't mean no offense, but I'd have you to know that I engaged to work for you, not to hold my tongue at your bidding, d'ye see? There ain't the man living as'll make Jo Bumpus shut up w'en he's got a mind to—"
The captain put an abrupt end to the remarks of his refractory seaman by starting up suddenly in fierce anger and seizing the tiller, apparently with the intent to fell him. He checked himself, however, as suddenly, and breaking into a loud laugh, cried:—
"Come, Jo, you must admit that there is at least one living man who has made you 'shut up' before you had finished what you'd got to say."
John Bumpus, who had thrown up his left arm to ward off the anticipated blow, and dropped his oar in order to clench his right fist, quietly resumed his oar, and shook his head gravely for nearly a minute, after which he made the following observation:—
"Capting, I've seed, in my experience o' life, that there are some constitootions as don't agree with jokin'; an' yours is one on 'em. Now, if you'd take the advice of a plain man, you'd never try it on. You're a grave man by natur', and you're so bad at a joke that a feller can't quite tell w'en you're a-doin' of it. See, now! I do declare I wos as near drivin' you right over the stern o' your own boat as could be, only by good luck I seed the twinkle in your eye in time."
"Pull away, my lad," said the captain, in the softest tones of his deep voice, at the same time looking his reprover straight in the face.
There was something in the tone in which that simple command was given, and in the look by which it was accompanied, that effectually quelled John Bumpus in spite of himself. Violence had no effect on John, because in most cases he was able to meet it with superior violence, and in all cases he was willing to try. But to be put down in this mild way was perplexing. The words were familiar, the look straightforward and common enough. He could not understand it at all, and being naturally of a philosophical turn of mind, he spent the next three minutes in a futile endeavor to analyze his own feelings. Before he had come to any satisfactory conclusion on the subject, the boat's keel grated on the white sand of the shore.
Now, while all that we have been describing in the last and present chapters was going on, a very different series of events was taking place on the coral-island; for there, under the pleasant shade of the cocoanut palms, a tall, fair, and handsome youth was walking lightly down the green slopes toward the shore in anticipation of the arrival of the schooner, and a naked, dark-skinned savage was dogging his steps, winding like a hideous snake among the bushes, and apparently seeking an opportunity to launch the short spear he carried in his hand at his unsuspecting victim.