“I suspect that if that were done,” said Jim, with a laugh, “you’d soon have all the boys on the British coast making earnest inquiries after their sinkers! But after all, father, although the girls are hard upon us sometimes, you must admit that we couldn’t get on without ’em.”
“True for ye, boy,” observed Jerry MacGowl, who, coming up at that moment, overheard the conclusion of the sentence. “It’s mesilf as superscribes to that same. Haven’t the swate creeturs led me the life of a dog; turned me inside out like an owld stockin’, trod me in the dust as if I was benaith contimpt an’ riven me heart to mortial tatters, but I couldn’t get on widout ’em nohow for all that. As the pote might say, av he only knowd how to putt it in proper verse:—
“‘Och, woman dear, ye darlin’,
It’s I would iver be
Yer praises caterwaulin’
In swaitest melodee!’”
“Mind your own business, Jerry,” said the mate, interrupting the flow of the poet’s inspiration.
“Sure it’s that same I’m doin’, sir,” replied the man, respectfully touching his cap as he advanced towards the gong that surrounded the windlass and uncovered it. “Don’t ye see the fog a-comin’ down like the wolf on the fold, an’ ain’t it my dooty to play a little tshune for the benefit o’ the public?”
Jerry hit the instrument as he spoke and drowned his own voice in its sonorous roar. He was driven from his post, however, by Dick Moy, one of the watch, who, having observed the approaching fog had gone forward to sound the gong, and displayed his dislike to interference by snatching the drumstick out of Jerry’s hand and hitting him a smart blow therewith on the top of his head.
As further conversation was under the circumstances impossible, John Welton and his son retired to the cabin, where the former detailed to the latter the visit of the strange gentleman with the keen grey eyes, and the conversation that had passed between them regarding Morley Jones. Still the youth remained unmoved, maintaining that suspicion was not proof, although he admitted that things now looked rather worse than they had done before.
While the father and son were thus engaged, a low moaning wail and an unusual heave of the vessel caused them to hasten on deck, just as one of the watch put his head down the hatch and shouted, “A squall, sir, brewing up from the nor’-east.”