Chapter Ten.
A Strong Contrast—A Victim of the Coper.
Birds of a feather flock together, undoubtedly—at sea as well as on land. As surely as Johnston, and Moore, and Jim Frost, and such men, hung about the mission-ship—ready to go aboard and to have a little meeting when suitable calms occurred, so surely did David Bright, the Swab, and other like-minded men, find themselves in the neighbourhood of the Coper when there was nothing to be done in the way of fishing.
Two days after the events narrated in the last chapter, the Swab—whose proper name was Dick Herring, and who sailed his own smack, the White Cloud—found himself in the neighbourhood of the floating grog-shop.
“Get out the boat, Brock,” said Herring to his mate—who has already been introduced to the reader as Pimply Brock, and whose nose rendered any explanation of that name unnecessary; “take some fish, an’ get as much as you can for ’em.”
The Swab did not name what his mate was to procure in barter with the fish, neither did Brock ask. It was an old-established order, well understood.
Soon Brock and two hands were on their way to the floating “poison-shop,” as one of the men had named it. He was affectionately received there, and, ere long, returned to the White Cloud with a supply of fire-water.
“You’re good at a bargain, Brock,” said his master, with an approving nod, tossing off a glass of the demon that held him as if in chains of steel—chains that no man could break. “I wish,” he added, looking round on the sea wistfully, “that some of our friends would come to join us in a spree.”