“With pleasure,” replied the skipper; “sit down here, and I’ll spin it off to you right away.”
I knew by the sound of their motions that they had seated themselves at the foot of the main-mast, just between the skylights of the two cabins, and feared that their talk might disturb my mother; but, reflecting that she must have got to sleep long ago, I thought it better not to disturb them, unless their talk should become too loud. As for myself, in my wakeful mood, their converse could not annoy me. After a time it began to interest me deeply.
“It was about the blowing-up of Southern ironclads, was it not?” said the skipper. As he spoke I could distinctly hear the puff, puff, of his pipe between each half-dozen words.
“Just so,” replied Lancey. “The master is uncommon fond of blowin’s-up and inquirin’ into the natur’ of things. I never know’d another except one as beat ’im at inwestigation, but that one beat everybody I ever seen or heard of. He was a Scotch boy, named Sandy—”
“What was his other name?” asked the skipper.
“’Aven’t a notion,” replied Lancey. “We never called ’im anythink else. I don’t believe he ’ad any other name. He said he was the son of an apothecary. No doubt the schoolmaster knew ’is other name, if he ’ad one, but he never used it, and we boys were content with Sandy. That boy, sir, seemed to me to know everythink, and was able, I believe, to do hanythink. He was a tremendous fighter, too, though not out o’ the way as regards size. He could lick the biggest boy in the school, and when he made up his mind to do a thing, nothin’ on earth could stop him a-doin’ of it.”
“Good,” said the skipper, with an emphatic puff; “that’s what we Americans call the power to go ahead. Did Sandy become a great man?”
“Don’t know,” answered Lancey. “He went a’ead too fast for me to foller. One day the master gave ’im a lickin’. He vowed he’d be revenged. Next mornin’ early he got up an’ smashed the school winders, redooced the master’s desk to matchwood, an’ walked away whistlin’. I never seed ’im since.”
“Nor heard of him?”
“Nor ’eard of ’im.”