“‘I’m here in the hexecution of my duty,’ says the bailiff, dropping his confident grins, and beginning to grow whitish. ‘Whatever you do contrairy to my orders you’ll do at your peril.’
“And so saying he walks right aft, and sits on the taffrail with his arms folded.
“Never was any quarter of an hour longer than that which the captain told me to wait. I had my watch in my hand, and all the time I was afraid the skipper would change his mind and give in to the bailiff, who sat aft with his hat over his ears, looking at the shore with his little eyes.
“‘Time’s up, sir!’ I bawled to the captain.
“‘Loose the torpsails,’ he sings out, and in a moment all hands were running about, sheeting home, and yelling out at the ropes, being as much afeard as I was that if we were not quick the sight of the dogged bailiff ’ud operate upon the skipper’s hintellect and stop our just rewenge upon that funkshonary’s audacity. The bailiff seeing the men at work, tumbles off the taffrail and comes running forrards.
“‘D’ye mean to say you don’t intend to obey the law?’ he shouts out, holding on to his chimbley-pot.
“‘Out of the ways!’ answers the skipper, ‘there’s no room for law here. We’re full up, mate; and since ye’re bound for a voyage, blow your nose and wave your hand to them as ye’re a parting from!’ and, as he says this, the wessel, catching the wind that was coming strong enough to make nothing above our topsails necessary, lays down to it, and we heads for the open water.
“I saw the bailiff staring wildly around him, as if he really would jump overboard, and it was worth a month’s pay to see him looking like that, and holding his hat on.
“‘Why, man,’ he shouts to the captain, ‘you’re never in earnest: d’ye know what you’re a doing of?’ and, finding that the skipper took no notice, he calls out to the men, ‘You’ll work this vessel at your peril if you obey your captain. My orders are to stop this brig, and if you don’t allow me to execute my duty——’ But just as he came to this the wessel met the first of the seas which were rolling outside the harbour—stiff seas they wos, for it was blowing half a gale o’ wind; she put her nose into it, and then rolled over, fit to bring her lower yardarms into the water; away flew the bailiff’s chimbley-pot hat clean overboard, and ye may boil me alive if I didn’t think he meant to follow it; for the send o’ the wessel tripped him over the weather hatch coamings, and he seemed to shoot—ay, as neatly as if he’d been kicked by one of them giants I used to read about when I was a little ’un—clean into the lee scuppers, where he lay stunned as I thought, until all on a sudden he jumped up and went clawing along till he come to the lee o’ the after deck house, where he squatted down, looking with his yaller face and blowing hair like a Madagascar monkey recovering from a fit of intoxication.”
Here my companion broke into a loud laugh, which he repeated again and again, as if the thoughts awakened in his mind were of too exquisite a kind to be dismissed with a single guffaw.