“Why so, mate?” asked Gunter.
“Because she’s the greatest curse that floats on the North Sea,” returned Luke in a tone of indignation.
“Ah!—you hate her because you’ve jined the teetotallers,” returned Gunter with something of a sneer.
“No, mate, I don’t hate her because I’ve jined the teetotallers, but I’ve jined the teetotallers because I hate her.”
“Pretty much the same thing, ain’t it?”
“No more the same thing,” retorted Luke, “than it is the same thing to put the cart before the horse or the horse before the cart. It wasn’t total-abstainin’ that made me hate the Coper, but it was hatred of the Coper that made me take to total-abstainin’—don’t you see?”
“Not he,” said Billy Bright, who had joined the group; “Gunter never sees nothing unless you stick it on to the end of his nose, an’ even then you’ve got to tear his eyes open an’ force him to look.”
Gunter seized a rope’s-end and made a demonstration of an intention to apply it, but Billy was too active; he leaped aside with a laugh, and then, getting behind the mast, invited the man to come on “an’ do his wust.”
Gunter laid down the rope’s-end with a grim smile and turned to Luke Trevor.
“But I’m sure you’ve got no occasion,” he said, “to blackguard the Coper, for you haven’t bin to visit her much.”