Jim said nothing. There was not very much to say just then; and McEwan roared aloud: “Man, ye’ve perrsonated a Hugli pilot, an’ that’s as much as to say ye’ve perrsonated ME! What did yon heathen give ye for honorarium?”
“’Hundred and twenty,” said Jim.
“’An’ by what manner o’ means did ye get through the ‘James and Mary’?”
“Father,” was the answer. “He went down the same tide and I—we—steered by him.”
McEwan whistled and choked, perhaps it was with anger. “Ye’ve made a stalkin’-horse o’ your father, then? Jim, laddie, he’ll make an example o’ you.”
The boat hooked on to the brig’s chains, and McEwan said, as he set foot on deck before Jim could speak, “Yon’s an enterprising cub o’ yours, Trevor. Ye’d better enter him in the regular business, or one o’ these fine days he’ll be acting as pilot before he’s qualified, and sinkin’ junks in the Fairway. He fetched yon junk down last night. If ye’ve no other designs I’m thinkin’ I’ll take him as my cub, for there’s no denying he’s a resourceful lad—for all he’s an unlicked whelp.”
“That,” said Trevor, reaching for Jim’s left ear, “is something we can remedy,” and he led him below.
The little knotted rope that they keep for general purposes on the pilot brig did its duty, but when it was all over Jim was unlicked no longer. He was McEwan’s property to be registered under the laws of the Port of Calcutta, and a week later, when the Ellora came along, he bundled over the pilot brig’s side with McEwan’s enamelled leather hand-bag and a roll of charts and a little bag of his own, and he dropped into the sternsheets of the pilot gig with a very creditable imitation of McEwan’s slow, swaying sit-down and hump of the shoulders.
THE JUNK AND DHOW
Once a pair of savages found a stranded tree.