Stubbins still continued to gaze at me.
"What's your idee?" he said, abruptly.
It may have been my fancy, but it seemed to me that there was something deeper than the mere sense the question conveyed.
I glanced at him. I couldn't have said, myself, just what my idea was.
"I don't know!" I answered, a little adrift. "He didn't strike me as cursing at the Second Mate. That is, I should say, after the first minute."
"Just what I say," he replied. "Another thing—don't it strike you as bein' bloomin' queer about Tom nearly comin' down by ther run, an' then this?"
I nodded.
"It would have been all hup with Tom, if it hadn't been for ther gasket."
He paused. After a moment, he went on again.
"That was honly three or four nights ago!"