“They’re a contrary sects too. Ask a girl civil-like to stand off a line you want to coil up, and she’ll get off an’ look at you as though you ought to have waited until she ’ad offered to shift. Pull on it without asking her to step off fust, an’ the ship won’t ’old her ’ardly. A man I knew once—he’s dead now, poor chap, and left three widders mourning their unrepairable loss—said that with all ’is experience wimmin was as much a riddle to ’im as when he fust married.
“O’ course, sometimes you get a gal down the fo’c’s’le pretending to be a man, shipping as ordinary seaman or boy, and nobody not a penny the wiser. It’s happened before, an’ I’ve no doubt it will again.
“We ’ad a queer case once on a barque I was on as steward, called the Tower of London, bound from the Albert Docks to Melbourne with a general cargo. We shipped a new boy just after we started as was entered in the ship’s books as ’Enery Mallow, an’ the fust thing we noticed about ’Enery was as ’e had a great dislike to work and was terrible sea-sick. Every time there was a job as wanted to be done, that lad ’ud go and be took bad quite independent of the weather.
“Then Bill Dowsett adopted ’im, and said he’d make a sailor of ’im. I believe if ’Enery could ’ave chose ’is father, he’d sooner ’ad any man than Bill, and I would sooner have been a orphan than a son to any of ’em. Bill relied on his langwidge mostly, but when that failed he’d just fetch ’im a cuff. Nothing more than was good for a boy wot ’ad got ’is living to earn, but ’Enery used to cry until we was all ashamed of ’im.
“Bill got almost to be afraid of ’itting ’im at last, and used to try wot being sarcastic would do. Then we found as ’Enery was ten times as sarcastic as Bill—’e’d talk all round ’im so to speak, an’ even take the words out of Bill’s mouth to use agin ’im. Then Bill would turn to ’is great natural gifts, and the end of it was when we was about a fortnight out that the boy ran up on deck and went aft to the skipper and complained of Bill’s langwidge.
“‘Langwidge,’ ses the old man, glaring at ’im as if ’e’d eat ’im—‘what sort o’ langwidge?’
“‘Bad langwidge, sir,’ ses ’Enery.
“‘Repeat it,’ ses the skipper.
“’Enery gives a little shiver. ‘I couldn’t do it, sir,’ he ses, very solemn; ‘it’s like—like you was talking to the bo’sen yesterday.’
“’Go to your duties,’ roars the skipper; ‘go to your duties at once, and don’t let me ’ear any more of it. Why, you ought to be at a young ladies’ school.’