'Oh, do not joke, Hugh,' said she. 'Look around the ocean: it is still bare.'
'I've bin a-telling Miss Nielsen,' exclaimed Abraham, 'that them coloured chaps forrads are a-talking about her as if she were a diwinity.'
'A angel,' said Jacob.
'A diwinity,' said Abraham, looking at his mate. 'The cove they calls boss—that there Nakier yonder, him as is a-looking at us as if his heart was agoing to bust—what d'ye think he says—ay, and in fust-class English, too? "That there gal," says he, "ain't no Englishwoman. I'm glad to know it. She's got too sweet a hoye for an Englishwoman." "What d'ye know about hoyes?" says I. "English bad, bad," says he; "some good," here he holds up his thumb as if a-counting wan; "but many veree bad, veree bad," he says, says he, and here he holds up his fower fingers, like a little sprouting of o'er-ripe plantains, meaning fower to one, I allow.'
'It's pork as is at the bottom o' them feelin's,' said Jacob.
'Abraham,' said I, in a low voice, for I had no desire to be overheard by the mate, who came and went at the rim of the poop overhead in his walk from the taffrail to the break of the deck, 'before you accept Captain Bunting's offer——'
'I have accepted it, Mr. Tregarthen,' he interrupted.
'When?'
'Last noight, or call it this marning. He was up and down while I kep' a look-out, and wanst he says to me, "Are you agreeable, Vise?" says he; and I says, "Yes, sir," having talked the matter o'er with Jacob.'
'I hope the pair of you have thought the offer well out,' said I, with a glance at the Captain's cabin, from which, however, we stood too far to be audible to him in it. 'I saw Nakier haranguing you yesterday afternoon, and, though you told me you didn't quite understand him, yet surely by this time you will have seen enough to make you guess that if the Captain insists on forcing pork down those men's throats his ship is not going to continue a floating Garden of Eden!'