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"I've often wondered how it is that it always falls to Bob's lot to go upon the look-out in bad weather. How is it?" asked an individual in semi-nautical costume at the far end of the room, whose bearing and manner conveyed the impression that he regarded himself, as indeed he was, somewhat of an intruder.
Then the captain explained that being hard and fast on the rocks they could not sink, and that the vessel being strong was likely to hold together, perhaps, for several hours. "We're not hard and fast, captain," said the semi-nautical passenger in an undertone, as he stood by the after-hatch, where most of the cabin passengers were assembled.
"Here is the young gentleman, Mr Junk," he said, addressing a one-eyed, burly, broad-shouldered personage, with a rubicund countenance, in a semi-nautical costume. "You know what to do with him, and so I leave him in your hands. Good-bye, Jack, I hope you may like it." "No fear of that, Mr Munch," I answered; "and tell them at home that you left me as jolly and happy as ever."
The wonderfully thin and spider-like appearance which he presented in his blue-tights and buttons on his arrival, created such a howl of derisive astonishment among the semi-nautical boys of Deal, that his friends became heartily ashamed of him.
The man looked as if he had seen things in life a big, burly, bearded man of apparently sixty years of age, hard, bronzed; something about him suggested sun and wind as they are met with in the far-off places. Usually he was seen in loose, comfortable, semi-nautical suits of blue serge; there was a roll in his walk that suggested the sea.
He sailed on a trading schooner, and when they entered the harbor at Nassau, he was glad to find the "Foam" at anchor there. As the schooner glided past the "Foam," Paul loudly hailed her. Captain Balbo protruded his red head through the gangway. When he recognized Paul, he greeted, him with a burst of semi-nautical and semi-scriptural eloquence and shouted: "Oi'll sind a boat afther ye.
"It might," replied the captain. "We are not far from the coast of China, are we?" asked the semi-nautical passenger. "Not very far." Seeing that the captain was not disposed to be communicative, the semi-nautical passenger retired to persecute and terrify some of the ladies with his surmises.
I had heard it uttered between two thick, red-necked fellows of the semi-nautical type at the Fenchurch Street Railway-station, where, in those days, the everyday male crowd was attired in jerseys and pilot-cloth mostly, and had the air of being more conversant with the times of high- water than with the times of the trains.
"Good-day, neighbour," said the person who entered, a strongly-built man with a bushy black beard and a sunburnt countenance, the sinister expression of which was ill-calculated to win confidence, and whose semi-nautical costume made it doubtful whether he was a landsman or sailor. "I have come to have a friendly chat with you, if you will give me leave?"
Selwyn, said the groom cheerily, touching his forehead in a semi-nautical greeting. 'Good-day, Mathews. How are all your family this morning? 'Meaning the hosses, sir, or opposite-like, my old mare and her colt? Likewise and sim'lar, and no disrespeck meant, meaning my old woman and little Wellington.
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