“Well, there’s no denying it, you’re a holy captain,” said Mac.
And from that day on he made but the one reference to the ship’s condition; and that was whenever Tommy drew upon his cellar. “Here’s to the junk trade!” he would say, as he held out his can of sherry.
“Why do you always say that?” asked Tommy.
“I had an uncle in the business,” replied Mac, and launched at once into a yarn, in which an incredible number of the characters were “laid out as nice as you would want to see,” and the oaths made up about two-fifths of every conversation.
Only once he gave them a taste of his violence; he talked of it, indeed, often; “I’m rather a voilent man,” he would say, not without pride; but this was the only specimen. Of a sudden he turned on Hemstead in the ship’s waist, knocked him against the foresail boom, then knocked him under it, and had set him up and knocked him down once more, before any one had drawn a breath.
“Here! Belay that!” roared Wicks, leaping to his feet. “I won’t have none of this.”
Mac turned to the captain with ready civility. “I only want to learn him manners,” said he. “He took and called me Irishman.”
“Did he?” said Wicks. “O, that’s a different story!—What made you do it, you tomfool? You ain’t big enough to call any man that.”
“I didn’t call him it,” spluttered Hemstead, through his blood and tears. “I only mentioned-like he was.”
“Well, let’s have no more of it,” said Wicks.