“’Xceptin’ the three glasses I told ye of—no.”
Well, now, what have you to tell me about the Termagant? You have already said that you are one of her crew, and that you were in the boat that day when we had a row about the whale. What more can you tell me?
The sailor sat down on a chair, stretched out his legs quite straight, and very wide apart, and thrust his hands, if possible, deeper into his pockets than they even were thrust before—so deep, in fact, as to suggest the idea that there were no pockets there at all—merely holes. Then he looked at Captain Dunning with a peculiarly sly expression of countenance and winked.
“Well, that’s not much. Anything more?” inquired the captain.
“Ho, yes; lots more. The Termagant’s in this yere port—at—this—yere—moment.”
The latter part of this was said in a hoarse emphatic whisper, and the man raising up both legs to a horizontal position, let them fall so that his heels came with a crash upon the wooden floor.
“Is she?” cried the captain, with lively interest; “and her captain?”
“He’s—yere—too!”
Captain Dunning took one or two hasty strides across the floor, as if he were pacing his own quarterdeck—then stopped suddenly and said—
“Can you get hold of any more of that boat’s crew?”