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Some time I will do as much for you. So neighborly! Thank you!" "Don't mention it!" snapped the Tortoise again, very much bored by all this chatter. She sniffed as she moved slowly along towards the school, with the second lunch carried carefully on her broad shell-back. "They are nice fat worms," she said.
Can't keep them from talking, can't I? Well, I can make 'em talk separate, leastways. If a whole crew came talking, parties would listen; but if it's only one lone old shell-back, it's the usual yarn. And at least, they needn't talk before six months, or if we have luck, and there's a whaler handy three years. And by that time, Mr. Dodd, it's ancient history."
"Well, here we are pointing out again, thank the Lord!" he said to his particular friend and crony among the crew, the carpenter, Richard Spicer, a battered old shell-back, like himself. "There is only one place from which I like to see the land, Richard!" "And where is that, bosun?" "Over the stern, as now, mate, when we 're going free with a fair wind, and leaving it fast behind.
His trick was nearly up, and when he was relieved he went forward; pausing at the fo'c'sle head to light a pipe he fell in talk with some of the hands, leaning with his back against the bulwarks and blown upon by the spill of the wind from the head sails. An old shell-back by name of Ponting was holding the floor. "We're comin' up to Kerguelen," he was saying. "Should think I did know it.
Maturin says he has only met one other woman sailor like her, and that was the daughter of a trader sailing among the Islands, who had lived all her life since birth on his ship and had scarcely slept ashore. She's as much born to it as any shell-back on board. She has the amazing gift of looking part of the tub, like the stokers and the man at the wheel.
He was dressed in dungaree trousers, a striped shirt, and a jacket baize green in parts from the influence of sun and salt. A typical old shell-back, round-shouldered, hooked of finger; a figure with strong hints of a crab about it.
He did this Saturday I speak of, and as there was no one else in my office at the time I told him my trouble. And he laughed! Humph! "The inhuman old shell-back laughed! And yet, if you'll believe me, when I heard the old chap rumbling at the other end of the wire, it cheered me up. I began to think, 'Why, he may have influence.
My companion was in high spirits at the favourable turn that seemed to have occurred in our affairs, and was chatting with me in animated tones as to what would be best to do upon our arrival in Cape Town, when O'Gorman, who had been forward among the crew, came slouching aft along the deck, in true shell-back fashion, and, with the rather abrupt salutation of "Morning misther; mornin', miss," unceremoniously joined us.
As the mate couldn't navigate, and I am an old shell-back, I sold out my trading station, took charge of her, brought my daughter aboard and filled the schooner with Line Island labourers." "Her mother is dead, I suppose?" Captain Courtayne coloured and shifted about in his seat. "Well, no, not as far as I know; but, you see, down there in the south-east a man has to change his wives occasionally.
But, whoever has gone through the experience will bear me out that the human mind enlarges, and things that would shock us ashore are as nothing out there, face to face with eternity. If so with grown-up people, how much more so with this old shell-back and his two charges?
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