“Did you see your wife again, Mr. Honna?”
“I did, Mr. McAlnwick, an’ she pinched me black an’ blue! An’ when we were walkin’ through the city that evenin’ I saw the Second Engineer followin’ a sealskin jacket along Paradise Street, and I felt glad he was leavin’ to go up for his ticket.”
“Is that all, Mr. Honna?” The Chief Officer’s face is screwed up, his glasses are on the end of his nose (how like my old Headmaster he looks now!), and he scrutinizes the Steward’s newspaper once more.
“All, Mr. McAlnwick? Apparently not, by this. Mr. Fallon’ll be down to see her, for he’s goin’ across to see the Giacopo, I know, an’, by thunder, he’ll fix her! Never seen him in a fix yet. Eh, Nicholas?”
“Ah, he’s a sharpun, by God!” This from the fervent Nicholas.
“Ses he, first thing when he put his fut on the deck when we brought the Ludovico into Shields from Nikolaeff, ses he, ‘Honna, look at them slack funnel stays; Honna, look at that spare propeller shaft, not painted; Honna, don’t keep pigs on the saddle-back bunker-hatch—’tis insanitary.’ Honna this, that, and the other all in one breath. And we’d had the blessed stern torn out of her, runnin’ foul o’ the breakwater, to say nothin’ of pickin’ up the telegraph cable with our anchor outside Constant!”
“Mr. Honna, tell me——”
“To-morrow, mister, to-morrow. ’Tis late, and I would turn in.”
And so we end our day.