The crew, pausing in their labors, looked on expectantly as they reached the deck. On the cook’s face was a benevolent and proprietary smile, while Henry concealed his anguish of soul under an appearance of stoic calm.
“This is the man,” said the skipper, putting his hand on the cook’s shoulder, “this is the man that found you, cap’n. Smartest and best chap I ever had sail with me!”
Flushed with these praises, but feeling that he fully deserved them, the cook took the hand which Captain Gething, after a short struggle with the traditions of ship masters, extended, and shook it vigorously. Having once started, he shook hands all round, winding up with the reluctant Henry.
“Why, I’ve seen this boy before,” he said, starting. “Had a chat with him yesterday. That’s what brought me down here to-day, to see whether I couldn’t find him again.”
“Well I’m hanged!” said the astonished skipper. “He’s as sharp as needles as a rule. What were you doing with your eyes, Henry?”
In an agony of mortification and rage, as he saw the joy depicted on the faces of the crew, the boy let the question pass. The cook, at the skipper’s invitation, followed him below, his reappearance being the signal for anxious inquiries on the part of his friends. He answered them by slapping his pocket, and then thrusting his hand in produced five gold pieces. At first it was all congratulations, then Sam, after a short, hard, cough, struck a jarring note.
“Don’t you wish now as you’d joined the syndikit, Dick?” he asked boldly.
“Wot?” said the cook, hastily replacing the coins.
“I arst ’im whether he was sorry ’e ’adn’t joined us,” said Sam, trying to speak calmly.
The cook threw out his hand and looked round appealingly to the landscape to bear witness to this appalling attempt at brigandage.