“It’s no good trying to do some people a kindness. Joe was perfectly sincere, and nobody could say but wot it wasn’t a good idea, but o’ course Mr. Bill Cousins must consider hisself insulted, and I can only suppose that the trouble he’d gone through ’ad affected his brain. Likewise Bob Pullin’s. Anyway, that’s the only excuse I can make for ’em. To cut a long story short, nobody ’ad any more breakfast, and no time to do anything until them two men was scrouged up in a corner an’ ’eld there unable to move.
“‘I’d never ’ave done ’em,’ ses the carpenter, arter it was all over, ‘if I’d know they was goin’ to carry on like this. They wanted to be done.’
“The mate’ll half murder ’em,’ ses Ted Hill.
“‘He’ll ’ave ’em sent to gaol, that’s wot he’ll do,’ ses Smith. ‘It’s a serious matter to go ashore and commit assault and battery on the mate.’
“‘You’re all in it,’ ses the voice o’ Bill from the floor. ‘I’m going to make a clean breast of it. Joe Smith put us up to it, the carpenter blacked us, and the others encouraged us.’
“‘Joe got the clothes for us,’ ses Bob. ‘I know the place he got ’em from, too.’
“The ingratitude o’ these two men was sich that at first we decided to have no more to do with them, but better feelings prevailed, and we held a sort o’ meeting to consider what was best to be done. An’ everything that was suggested one o’ them two voices from the floor found fault with and wouldn’t ’ave, and at last we ’ad to go up on deck with nothing decided upon, except to swear ’ard and fast as we knew nothing about it.
“The only advice we can give you,’ ses Joe, looking back at ’em, ’is to stay down ’ere as long as you can.’
“A’most the fust person we see on deck was the mate, an’ a pretty sight he was. He’d got a bandage round ’is left eye, and a black ring round the other. His nose was swelled and his lip cut, but the other officers were making sich a fuss over ’im, that I think he rather gloried in it than otherwise.
“‘Where’s them other two ’ands?’ he ses, by and by, glaring out of ’is black eye.