'Ay,' exclaimed one of the men, who proved to be Mike Scott, 'you lay a man's going to be spoilt by the pleasuring that's to be done under him. What was said, Joe?'
'That blarsted Dutchman talks in his beard. That and his pipe smothered up his voice. I couldn't hear him. T'other was more clear. He spoke of sailors as had scuttled their ships, as had broke the cap'n's heart by ruinating his voyage, and made a widder of his wife by sending him adrift. T'other speaks, and then the cap'n says, "What's a sailor's love like?"'
Silence followed.
'What do he mean by "a sailor's love"?' exclaimed the third man, Maul. 'Is it a belaying-pin or a handspike? You'll find he's a-trying to excite a disgust against us sailors in the mind of that old Dutchman, so that he may make a difficulty about paying us at the end of the voyage.'
''Ow d'ye know,' said Dabb, 'that it ain't the Dutchman who's put the skipper up to ill-treating of us, reckoning upon sailing into the Thames with some of us in irons? D'ye mean to say——'
'Whisper, you crow!'
'D'ye mean to say,' continued the man, lowering his voice, 'that the stores were shipped without the Dutchman knowing of their character? I'm a-beginning to smell blue hell in this business.'
All this while the moon shone sweetly and piercingly. A divine peace was upon the sea, and the light noises of the wind were as fresh as dew on grass, with the sound as of the plashing of many fountains. In the cabin they talked of poetry—and one of the sailors forward was for cutting the captain's heart out!
The little royal and top-gallant sail were half aback; the luffs of the jibs were trembling.