"Dago no tell you, s'pose you ask," answered the quiet little Portuguese, sarcastically.
He had already conceived a disgust for one, at least, of his shipmates. Though having no desire, at present, to quarrel with him, he took in good part the epithet of "Dago," which Burley had always at his tongue's end.
"Well," said I, "I shall not believe that the captain—"
"Who's the captain?" interrupted Old Jeff.
"Why, Captain Upton."
"O! the old man you mean. If you was talking about the skipper of another ship, it might do to say the cap'n, but ours is always the old man—mind that."
"Very well—the old man, then," I resumed. "I shall not believe that he will misuse or ill-use a man for not knowing what he can't be expected to know without some practice and experience. It's an old saying that the devil is not so black as he is painted; and the only way for us new hands is to go to work cheerfully, and try to learn our duty. I'm sure I am willing to learn, and would be obliged to any one who would teach or help me."
This view of the matter, and my expression of it, at once found an echo from all the other youngsters, while, at the same time, it secured for me the better opinion of Old Jeff himself; who, though a notorious growler, was not a bad-hearted man in the main. In deed, this negro was a specimen of a class which every seaman will recognize at once, who growl rather from confirmed habit than from any evil motive; and nothing could be further from his mind than to be the intentional cause of trouble on board any ship in which he served. Not so with Burley, whom I set down at once as a man to be instinctively avoided and distrusted. Growling, with Old Jeff, was a weakness, and, from long indulgence in the practice had become, as it were, an essential part of his existence; but the sea-lawyer was a deliberate mischief-maker. In one respect, as I afterwards discovered, they were much on a par, being both arrant cowards when put to the test.
The cook now made his appearance down the ladder—a merry, simple-hearted African, of a shining bottlegreen complexion, between whom and Old Jeff a harmless sort of skirmishing feud existed, they having sailed together on the previous voyage with Captain Upton, and contracted a habit of cracking coarse jokes upon each other to such an extent that a stranger might have supposed them to be in a towering rage at times, when they were in reality fast friends.
"Halloo, Jeff, aint you turned in yet?" said the cook, showing his ivory from ear to ear. "Here you be, boys; all de bunks taken up, and I's left like dey say de Son o' Man in de Scriptur', nowhere to lay my head. De old man says he's going to have an extra bunk put up for me in de steerage. S'pose he wont do it till after we get out to sea."