The mate hesitated so long for a crushing rejoinder that his wife lost all patience and rose to her feet crimson with wrath.
“How dare you talk to my husband like that?” she demanded fiercely. “George, come up on deck this instant!”
“I don’t mind what he says,” said the mate, who had only just begun his dinner.
“You come away at once,” said his wife, pushing his plate from him.
The mate got up with a sigh, and, meeting the look of horror-stricken commiseration in his captain’s eye, returned it with one of impotent rage.
“Use a larger knife, cap’n,” he said savagely. “You’ll swallow that little ’un one of these days.”
The skipper, with the weapon in question gripped in his fist, turned round and stared at him in petrified amazement, “If I wasn’t the cap’n o’ this ship, George,” he said huskily, “an’ bound to set a good example to the men, I’d whop you for them words.”
“It’s all for your good, Captain Bunnett,” said Mrs. Fillson mincingly. “There was a poor old workhouse man I used to give a penny to sometimes, who would eat with his knife, and he choked himself with it.”
“Ay, he did that, and he hadn’t got a mouth half the size o’ yours,” said the mate warningly.
“Cap’n or no cap’n, crew or no crew,” said the skipper in a suffocating voice, “I can’t stand this. Come up on deck, George, and repeat them words.”