"All our ship and cargo to a paper-bag of beans he didn't, ma'am," said Semple.
"I—I hate him," cried Connie Ryder, as she entered the cabin.
"She's as keen as mustard—as red pepper," said Semple; "if she'd been a man she'd have made a seaman."
"I've never sailed wi' a skeeper's wife before," said McGill, who had shipped in the Star of the South a week earlier, in place of the second mate, who had been given his discharge for drunkenness. "Is she at all interferin', Mr. Semple? "
Old Semple nodded.
"She interferes some, and it would be an obstinate cook that disputed with her. She made a revolution in the galley, my word, when she first came on board. Some would say she cockered the crew over-much, but I was long enough in the fo'c's'le not to forget that even a hog of a man don't do best on hogwash."
Which was a marvellous concession on the part of any of the after-guard of any ship, seeing how the notion persists among owners, and even among officers, that the worse men are treated the better they work.
"She seems a comfortable ship," owned McGill.
And so everyone on board of her allowed.
"Though she is a bit of a heart-breaker to handle," said the men for'ard. "But for that she be a daisy. And to think that the bally Battle-Axe goes about like a racing yacht!"