Having unburdened his mind, and eaten all the ham, and eggs, and toast, and drunk all the coffee, and asked for more and got it, Dick Jones proceeded to make himself supremely happy by filling his pipe and lighting it.
“I’ll take him to law,” said Captain Dunning firmly, smiting the table with his fist.
“I know’d a feller,” said Jones, “wot always said, w’en he heard a feller say that, ‘You’ll come for to wish that ye hadn’t;’ but I think ye’re right, cap’en; for it’s a clear case, clear as daylight; an’ we’ll all swear to a’most anything as’ll go fur to prove it.”
“But are you sure your messmates are as willing as you are to witness against the captain?”
“Sure? In coorse I is—sartin sure. Didn’t he lamp two on ’em with a rope’s-end once till they wos fit to bust, and all for nothin’ but skylarkin’? They’ll all go in the same boat with me, ’cept perhaps the cook, who is named Baldwin. He’s a cross-grained critter, an’ll stan’ by the cap’en through thick an thin, an’ so will the carpenter—Box they call him—he’s dead agin us; but that’s all.”
“Then I’ll do it at once,” cried Captain Dunning, rising and putting on his hat firmly, as a man does when he has made a great resolve, which he more than half suspects will get him into a world of difficulties and trouble.
“I s’pose I may set here till ye come back?” inquired Dick Jones, who now wore a dim mysterious aspect, in consequence of the cloud of smoke in which he had enveloped himself.
“You may sit there till they turn you out; but come and take breakfast with me at the same hour to-morrow, will ye?”
“Won’t I?”
“Then good-day.”