“Terrible, terrible, horribly terrible, upon my word, very horribly terrible, Mister Scrumpydike.”
Here the dialogue was interrupted by a knocking at the door which made Scrumpydike jump upon his legs, and Log twist himself round upon his stool, each looking, in a considerable degree, alarmed and anxious. Presently the door opened cautiously, and Captain Compass entered the cabin. His sallow complexion, high cheek bones, prominent nose, thick lips, and restless grey eyes were surrounded by a thick mass of coarse black hair, that spread from each side of his narrow forehead, down his cheeks and under his chin, in a formidable pair of whiskers. His figure was spare of flesh, but in the gauntness of body, length of arm, and sinewy leg, there was evidently more than ordinary strength. His appearance was not likely to excite for him much regard, but there was a careless freedom in his manner, a frank boldness in his conversation, and a pungent satire in his wit, that had made him an agreeable companion to the merchant’s son.
“All right, Scrumpy?” inquired Compass in a whisper, after closing the door carefully after him.
“All right, cap’ain,” replied Scrumpydike.
“Right, right, very right, perfectly right, right as a trivet, Captain Compass,” added Log.
“Scrunch me, if we shan’t all be served with sauce we don’t like, unless we keep a smart look out ahead,” observed the captain as he flung himself upon a bale of goods.
“Why, what’s in the wind now, cap’ain?” inquired Scrumpydike, with some earnestness, while little Log remained silent with alarm.
“May I be peeled to shreds in a hurricane, if that dark looking son of a savage, who came on board the day we sailed, doesn’t suspect the game we are playing,” continued the captain.
“No!” exclaimed the other, as an expression of anxiety became visible in his hard rough features; and the captain’s clerk trembled on his stool as if he was shaken by an ague.
“I was palavering young Porphyry as smooth as a rat’s tail, after he had been pretty well blown up with the long-winded sentences of that tedious old porpoise Fortyfolios, and was going it at a smacking rate about the pleasure of liberty and the enjoyments of a life of enterprise, the sort of discourse, I have found out, he’ll suck in as a fish drinks water, when happening to turn my daylights a little a starboard, I beheld that black thief Zabra watching me like a snake, and when I met the full stare of his great goggling eyes they seemed to have the power of piercing through and through right into the hold where all my secrets are ballasted, so I, having a sudden fear that he was up to the course I was steering, lost the helm of my discourse, and anchored in shallow water, with a muddy bottom, in no time.”