“I expect so,” said Marsden. It was not a tone encouraging a pursuance of the subject. But the captain did not know it.
“The capitan won’t stand his bossing some time,” he kept it up; “there’ll be a row, and the whole crew’ll take only too much pleasure in sticking their knives into him. He looks steady. Must be in a pretty bad way to come to that. Don’t know that I ever saw a white man in the fix along here before. He’d better get out of it while his skin’s whole.”
“Wonder who he is?” he asked, presently. It was in the nature of an inquiry addressed to no one in general, and the mate in particular. The mate did not answer. He was concerning himself about a delay in the hold, and called down some orders which were superfluous, in view of the fact that the boatswain had just gone scuttling down the ladder to attend to things himself.
The captain, however, was not put off. He had nothing to do. “Do you know?” he asked, when the mate came below him again.
“Know what, sir?” Marsden was thinking his own thoughts. He had not paid much attention.
“Who that fellow is?”
“Man named Stanwood,” said the first-officer, and he tried to head the captain off by another order to the hold. It was accompanied by profanity. The delay was nobody’s fault, but, as is frequently the case, the oaths expended in one direction were inspired from another.
It was a pity the captain couldn’t go aft and work a reckoning, or talk to the passengers. Not that he objected to the captain. The captain was a very good sort. It was the topic Marsden disliked.
“Stanwood—rather imposing for a lanchero in there with all them black brutes, aint it? Not that he’s any cleaner, though. Who told you it was that?”
“Nobody,” said Marsden; “I know it.”