"Well, then, we are thinking much of the same thing, captain."
"What do you mean?"
"That he ain't exactly one of our sort."
"No, he's no sailor, certainly; and yet, for a land lubber, he's about as rum a customer as ever I met with."
"So he is, sir."
"He stands salt water well; and I must say that I couldn't lay a top of those water casks in that style very well."
"Nor nobody amongst us, sir."
"Well, then, he's in nobody's way, it he?—nobody wants to take his berth, I suppose?"
The men looked at each other somewhat blank; they didn't understand the meaning at all—far from it; and the idea of any one's wanting to take the stranger's place on the water casks was so outrageously ludicrous, that at any other time they would have considered it a devilish good joke and have never ceased laughing at it.
He paused some minutes, and then one of them said,—