“Come down, sir, come down—there’s work to be done as soon as you have breakfasted.”
Mulford did come down, and he was soon seated at the table with both Josh and Jack Tier for attendants. The aunt and the niece were in their own cabin, a few yards distant, with the door open.
“What a fuss ’e cap’in make ’bout dat sail,” grumbled Josh, who had been in the brig so long that he sometimes took liberties with even Spike himself. “What good he t’ink t’will do to measure him inch by inch? Bye’m by he get alongside, and den ’e ladies even can tell all about him.”
“He nat’rally wishes to know who gets alongside,” put in Tier, somewhat apologetically.
“What matter dat. All sort of folk get alongside of Molly Swash; and what good it do ’em. Yoh! yoh! yoh! I do remem’er sich times vid ’e ole hussy!”
“What old hussy do you mean?” demanded Jack Tier a little fiercely, and in a way to draw Mulford’s eyes from the profile of Rose’s face to the visages of his two attendants.
“Come, come, gentlemen, if you please; recollect where you are,” interrupted the mate authoritatively. “You are not now squabbling in your galley, but are in the cabin. What is it to you, Tier, if Josh does call the brig an old hussy; she is old, as we all know, and years are respectable; and as for her being a “hussy,” that is a term of endearment sometimes. I’ve heard the captain himself call the Molly a “hussy” fifty times, and he loves her as he does the apple of his eye.”
This interference put an end to the gathering storm as a matter of course, and the two disputants shortly after passed on deck. No sooner was the coast clear than Rose stood in the door of her own cabin.
“Do you think the strange vessel is an American?” she asked eagerly.
“It is impossible to say—English or American I make no doubt. But why do you inquire?”