He looked at Teach, who was at the helm, and a smile crawled over his face, as wind creeps over a surface of sea. His smile wrinkled his massive visage to the line of his hair.
“Brayers, Mr. Fielding! Dot vhas strange after all dese months. For vhat vhas ve to pray now dot der dollars vhas on boardt?”
“Reason the matter with the captain, if you choose. You have your instructions.”
“Ay, ay, sir. Mr. Fielding, may I hov a verdt mit you?”
He spoke respectfully, and moved from the wheel. He was a man I had been careful to give a wide berth to throughout the voyage; but also was he a man whom, for my own peace sake, I had been at some pains not to give offense to. The familiarity of the fellow was Dutch. I never could make sure that it was more than a characteristic of his countrymen with him, and that he meant insolence when he spoke insolently. I bore in mind, moreover, that secretly he, and no doubt the rest of the crew, viewed me as an interloper—as one who would, probably, share far more handsomely than they in the treasure without having entered at Amsterdam or having formed a part of the original scheme of the expedition. This consideration, then, made me wary in my relations with Yan Bol.
He moved from the wheel out of earshot of the fellow there, and said, in a rumbling voice of subdued thunder:
“I oxbects dot der captain vhas not fery vell, Mr. Fielding?”
“He is not very well.”
“She vhas a bad shob if he vhas to took und die.”
“Yaw; but what is it you wish to say to me?”