“Vhat vhas dot cask oonder your shtern?”
“It keeps the pump a-going,” cried Tarbrick.
“Goot anchells!” cried Van Laar, “do I onderstand that you hov not a schip’s gompany strong enough to keep der pumps manned?”
“We are four well men and myself,” shouted Tarbrick; “the rest are sick.”
“I do not go home in dot schip,” said Van Laar, sitting down.
“Oars!” I cried, as we swept alongside. “Mr. Van Laar, I beg you will step on board. Pray give us no trouble. You must go, you know, though it should come to my having to send for fresh hands to whip you aboard,” by which word whip he perfectly well understood me to mean a tackle made fast to the yardarm, used for hoisting. “Mr. Tarbrick, call those three fellows of yours aft to get this chest over the side.”
The three men rose in a lifeless way from the top of the timber, shambled to abreast of the boat in a lifeless way, and in a lifeless way still dragged up Van Laar’s sea-chest, to the grummet handle of which a rope had been attached.
“On deck dere,” called Van Laar, getting up again and planting his legs apart, “how moch do you leak in der hour?”
I winked at Tarbrick, who was leaning over the rail, but the man was either a fool or did not catch my wink, for he answered, in his melancholy voice:
“It’s a-drainin’ in very unpleasantly. I han’t sounded the well since this morning, but,” he added, as though to encourage Van Laar, “we’re full of timber and can’t sink.”