“By the look of your party you must have suffered something awful. The skipper will attend to you pretty soon and he’ll do his best to make you happy. But this ain’t no gold-plated yacht, and it ain’t no table dote hotel.”
“So I see, but I’ll pay for the best on board. Really, money is no object——”
Johnny Kent chuckled and turned to wave the nozzle at the negro, who was sitting up.
“You subside, Jiminez, or I’ll dent this over your head. It ain’t healthy for you to get well too darned fast.”
He scrutinized the castaway with a tolerant, fatherly air and answered him:
“Better stow that you-be-damned manner of yours, young man. We’re outlaws, liable to be blown out of water any blessed minute. Those tarriers for’ard had just as soon throw you overboard as not if they don’t like your style. You ain’t a shipwrecked hero. You’re an unavoidable nuisance aboard this hooker. We’ve got other fish to fry.”
The young man flushed angrily. He was pleasant-featured, fair-haired, of athletic build, his accent suggesting that he had imported it from England. He was conscious of his own importance in the world whose idols were money and social position. Grizzled old Johnny Kent, who had diced with fortune and looked death between the eyes on many seas, knew only one distinction between men. They were “good stuff” or they were “quitters.” As for money, to have a dollar in one’s pocket after a week ashore argued a prudence both stingy and unmanly. Wherefore he wholly failed to grasp the view-point of the young man who had been wrecked in a sea-going yacht.
Fortunately Captain O’Shea came back to divert the chief engineer’s outspoken opinions. He called the castaway aside to say:
“Come to the galley with me and the cook will do his best for ye. I will sit down there and hear your yarn. If you want some clothes, maybe I can fit you out. My men are looking after your sailors.”
“This is a filibustering expedition, I take it,” exclaimed the other as they went forward.