“I hope,” said William Brown the botanist, “that there’s some vegetation on it. I don’t see much as yet.”
“Ain’t it a strange thing,” remarked long-legged Isaac Martin, in a more than usually sepulchral tone, “that land-lubbers invariably shows a fund of ignorance when at sea, even in regard to things they might be supposed to know somethin’ about?”
“How have I shown ignorance just now?” asked Brown, with a smile, for he was a good-humoured man, and could stand a great deal of chaffing.
“Why, how can you, bein’ a gardener,” returned Martin, “expect to see wegitation on the face of a perpindikler cliff?”
“You’re right, Martin; but then, you know, there is generally an interior as well as a face to a cliffy island, and one might expect to find vegetation there, don’t you see.”
“That’s true—to find it,” retorted Martin, “but not to see it through tons of solid rock, and from five or six miles out at sea.”
“But what if there’s niggers on it?” suggested Adams, who joined the party at this point.
“Fight ’em, of coorse,” said John Williams.
“An’ drive ’em into the sea,” added Quintal.
“Ay, the place ain’t big enough for more than one lot,” said McCoy. “It don’t seem more than four miles long, or thereabouts.”