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The cost of such a chronometer would have been divided between the three of us. I stand for its total cost. You just tell the sailors that I, Simon Nishikanta, will pay one hundred dollars gold money for the first one that sights land on Mr. Greenleaf's latitude and longitude."
But Simon Nishikanta, becoming suddenly aware that the old man was babbling, bellowed out ferociously: "Oh, shut up! Close your jaw! You make me tired with your everlasting 'I remember." The Ancient Mariner was guilelessly surprised, as if he had slipped somewhere in his narrative. "No, I assure you," he continued. "It must have been some error of my poor old tongue.
Nishikanta bellicosely shouldered his vast bulk up to the captain, opened his shirt, and exposed his revolver. "There's too many for the boat," he said, "and the steward's one of 'em that don't go along. Get that. Hold it in your head. The steward's one of 'em that don't go along."
"Sure, let him go, the more the easier," Nishikanta took charge of the situation. "Anybody else?" "Sure," Dag Daughtry sneered to his face. "I reckon what's left of the beer goes with my boat . . . unless you want to argue the matter." "For two cents " Nishikanta spluttered in affected rage. "Not for two billion cents would you risk a scrap with me, you money-sweater, you," was Daughtry's retort.
Jackson," Captain Doane commanded the mate, "will you sound the well." The mate obeyed, although he kept an anxious eye on the whale, which had gone off at a tangent and was smoking away to the eastward. "You see, that's what you get," Grimshaw snarled at Nishikanta. Nishikanta nodded, as he wiped the sweat away, and muttered, "And I'm satisfied. I got all I want.
That's about as big an idea as your mind ever had room for. You go around looking for to dig out ten million dollars with a second- hand spade you call buy for sixty-eight cents." Dag Daughtry could not fail to overhear some of these conversations, which were altercations rather than councils. The invariable ending, for Simon Nishikanta, would be what sailors name "the sea-grouch."
On occasion, when a school of blackfish disported by, each one of them a whale of respectable size, Nishikanta would be beside himself in the ecstasy of inflicting pain.
So sailed the Ship of Fools Michael playing with Scraps, respecting Cocky and by Cocky being bullied and wheedled, singing with Steward and worshipping him; Daughtry drinking his six quarts of beer each day, collecting his wages the first of each month, and admiring Charles Stough Greenleaf as the finest man on board; Kwaque serving and loving his master and thickening and darkening and creasing his brow with the growing leprous infiltration; Ah Moy avoiding the Black Papuan as the very plague, washing himself continuously and boiling his blankets once a week; Captain Doane doing the navigating and worrying about his flat-building in San Francisco; Grimshaw resting his ham-hands on his colossal knees and girding at the pawnbroker to contribute as much to the adventure as he was contributing from his wheat-ranches; Simon Nishikanta wiping his sweaty neck with the greasy silk handkerchief and painting endless water-colours; the mate patiently stealing the ship's latitude and longitude with his duplicate key; and the Ancient Mariner, solacing himself with Scotch highballs, smoking fragrant three-for-a-dollar Havanas that were charged to the adventure, and for ever maundering about the hell of the longboat, the cross-bearings unnamable, and the treasure a fathom under the sand.
Doane, Nishikanta, and Grimahaw screamed at each other and pounded the table at each other, when they were not patiently and most politely interrogating the Ancient Mariner. "He's got their goat," the steward early concluded to himself; but, thereafter, try as he would, he failed to get the Ancient Mariner's goat. Charles Stough Greenleaf was the Ancient Mariner's name.
Simon Nishikanta was fiendish in his descriptions of whatever miscreant had done the deed and of how he should be made to suffer for it, while Grimshaw clenched and repeatedly clenched his great hands as if throttling some throat. "I remember, it was in forty-seven nay, forty-six yes, forty-six," the Ancient Mariner chattered. "It was a similar and worse predicament.
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