‘No; there’s been ne’er a smother with us.’
‘The death of Mr. Chicken,’ said I, ‘must have been a blow, seeing that the barque carried but a couple of mates.’
‘How many mates do a ship of this size want?’ said he, without looking at me and slowly masticating.
‘Well, she has only one now, anyway,’ said I.
‘No; she ain’t got even one,’ he exclaimed, with the manner of an ill-tempered man who only listens for the sake of contradiction and argument.
‘Are not you second mate?’ I asked.
‘Not I,’ he replied with a gruff laugh. ‘They calls me second mate, and I keeps watch and watch with the capt’n as if I was second mate; but what I’m signed for is carpenter, and carpenter I be, and there’s nothen more to be made out of me than that, and I don’t care who the bloomin’ blazes hears me say it.’
He drew to the rail by a step and expectorated violently over it. I was too anxious for information about this little ship and her crew to suffer my curiosity to be hindered by the man’s rough, coarse, ill-natured speech and demeanour.
‘I was wondering where you took your meals,’ said I. ‘I now understand. You live forward?’ He gave me a surly nod. ‘But not in the forecastle?’
‘Where else? Ain’t the fok’sle good enough for me?’