“Ay, ay, Boggle!” exclaimed a stout weatherbeaten-looking mariner, to whom all his associates appeared to listen with great deference, arising either from his superior age or station,—“she is a smart boat; as neat a one as ever floated. She’ll swim better than a shark, and faster than a dolphin; and I’ll wager a month’s pay to a mouldy biscuit, that between this and the tother side o’ the world we shan’t meet with her match.”
“True enough, Hearty,” said the person spoken to, a lumbering, stout, short, and awkwardly-made man of about thirty, with a large head, and a stupid yet good-natured countenance, which expressed an inclination to act in the right way that was always marred by an extraordinary aptitude to do wrong. “True enough. May I walk the deck till I split into shivers, if I’m not convinced of every word you say! But every man as is a man and thinks like a man should have a notion of his own on things in general; therefore, Hearty, I don’t believe it.”
“Pooh!” exclaimed a younger sailor, addressing himself to the last speaker, “what’s the value o’ your judgment against the notions of such an old hand as Hearty? Why he must ha’ sailed in a power o’ different crafts afore you were launched!”
“Exactly, Climberkin, exactly,” replied Boggle eagerly—“that’s my opinion; it’s true, there’s not a doubt of it: but every man as is a man——”
“Well, may I be scrunched into everlasting smash if I know where we’re bound—that’s all,” emphatically remarked another speaker in the group, thrusting forward a thick head of sandy hair, with a countenance sharp and meagre.
“Nor I,” said another.
“Nor I,” echoed several around him.
“Why you see how it is,” answered Boggle, mysteriously; “there’s a sort o’ a secret in it. It arn’t for a fellow afore the mast to be ’quisitive o’ what’s going on on the quarter-deck; but I likes to have right notions o’ things in general, as every man as is a man and thinks like a man should. So having a pretty shrewd guess as how Scrumpydike, who’s al’ays alongside the captain, knowed more o’ the matter than he’d a mind to ’municate, I follows in his wake not a hundred years longer than this very mornin’; and, quite palavering like, I hails him wi’ ‘I say, Scrumpydike, my bo!’ ‘What cheer?’ says he. ‘P’raps you don’t know nothin’ o’ our sailing orders?’ says I, quite social. ‘P’raps I do,’ says he, in a manner as showed he did. I says nothin’ more on that subject then, cause I had a notion ’twould be no good; so I speaks him civil, and axed him to liquidate wi’ me upon summat comfortable, and we went together into a snuggish sort o’ a spiritual close by, and when I got him pretty ’municative I thought he’d a told the most secret thing as he knowed, cause he was letting down the cable in reg’lar style. Now’s the time, thought I; so I says to him, quite familiar, as I felt sartain sure o’ his telling, ‘Scrumpydike, my bo!’ says I, ‘where be we bound?’—And what d’ye think he said?” inquired the speaker, suddenly addressing himself to his associates.
“What did he say, Boggle?” anxiously inquired a young sailor, pressing forward to hear the interesting communication.