“Is!” Kit exclaimed. “Then do you know whether he is alive?”
“It’s not me that’s knowin’, sir,” Blinkey replied. “He was in a good tight boat the last I set eyes on ’im, but there’s no sayin’. I was drownded mesilf in that wreck, an’ that was the third time. But a sailor havin’ nine lives, like a cat, I’ve six yet to dispose of.”
Kit was kept in agony by the slowness of the old man in coming to the point and the frequent interruptions of the sailors, so he took Blinkey up to his stateroom, where they could talk in peace.
“Now tell me about the voyage, Mr.—Mr.—”
“Blinkey,” the old man interrupted. “It’s so long since I’ve had any other I’ve forgot what it was. Well, sir, as I was a-sayin’, I shipped for Ameriky in the bark Margate, and she took fire an’ burnt in New York bay, so there was Blinkey out of a job. But I wasn’t a man in them days to stay long on shore, sir, so I looks about—”
“Yes!” Kit interrupted, fearing that another long yarn was coming. “But the Flower City.”
“I was a-gettin’ to that, sir,” the old man went on, without hastening in the least. “So I looks about, as I was a-sayin’, an’ a berth offers on the Flower City, an’ I ships on her. Well, sir, we made two v’yages down the coast, an’ then we loaded with machinery for New Orleans. Ah, it was that there machinery as done us up, sir. All went well till we run into a gale off Hatteras; an’ we’d ’a’ pulled through that if the cargo’d been better stowed. But we had a heavy load on deck, an’ some of the big machines carried loose. Ah, it oughtn’t to be allowed, sir, that it oughtn’t, to carry heavy cargo on deck.”
“And then?” Kit asked. It was to him the most interesting thing he had ever listened to; and the old man was so slow in coming to the point!
“Then we give a lurch, sir, and over we went. Both our starboard boats was under water, but we’d two on the port side, an’ we took to them. Your father steered one, and the Captain the other, an’ I was in the Captain’s boat. Night was a-comin’ on, an’ the last I see of Mr. Silburn he was a-headin’ his boat about sou-sou-east, an us a-followin’. That was the last, sir.”
“And you?” Kit asked.