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That kind of shakes the starch out of the brotherly love and New Jerusalem business. You go through the mill, and you'll have a bigger grudge against every old shellback that dirties his plate in the three oceans, than the Bank of California could settle up. No; it has an ugly look to it, but the only way to run a ship is to make yourself a terror."
Shellback was a village some ten miles off, whither he had been summoned the evening before. Both ladies brightened up. They delighted to hear of the young doctor's experiences. "I don't suppose you know," Doctor Strong went on, "no, you wouldn't be likely to, an old man named Butters, Ithuriel Butters? Quaint name! suggests 'Paradise Lost' and buns. Old Man Butters they call him.
An' Addie's dyin' fast, Tom; dyin', an' I can't say a prayer with her; I don't know none. I'm only a drunken old shellback, an' I ought to be struck dead for my bloody sins. She's all I has in the world to love; an' now, an' now He turned away and, covering his face with his coarse, sunburnt hands, sobbed like a child. Half an hour later Wallis and Lita were in the room with the dying girl.
"Well then, I'm beggared if I can see anything in that sort of an answer," remarked the young fellow resentfully. "Dear boy," I replied; "I never imagined that you could. I would you had but the wit; 'twere better than your dukedom. By-the-way-what is Jack's other name?" "Which Jack? Old Jack, or Young Jack, or Jack the Shellback, or Fog-a-bolla Jack?"
Some other visitor had left behind Stevenson's Ebb Tide, and trying to think out an excuse that would quiet the qualms I began to feel for this idle preference of mine for old junk, I began picking out the passages I liked. The ruins of an empire would leave me frigid, when a bit of an old rail that an old shellback had leaned on in the middle watch would bring me up all standing."
"Well, we began to talk about the jealousy there was amongst the station chaps on account of Jack the Shellback being picked to take Nosey's place; and from that we got round to gossip about you stopping with Nosey the evening you left here, and wondering how you got on together, being queer in different ways. Then the conversation settled down on you; and we even quoted a remark Mrs.
You are like me; nothing so affecting as ships!" said he. "The ruins of an empire would leave me frigid, when a bit of an old rail that an old shellback leaned on in the middle watch, would bring me up all standing. But come, let's see some more of the island. It's all sand and coral and palm-trees; but there's a kind of a quaintness in the place."
He owned, with a shyly comic glance, that he had leanings towards buccaneering. The man of action, were he but some shaggy-bearded shellback, appealed to him. His own physique was his apology for being merely a writer of novels. We went on board the steamer, and at his request I bade a steward show his faithful henchman over her. In the meantime we sat in the saloon and drank "soft" drinks.
"They're wonderful talkers, all three of 'em, and they're everlastin'ly gassin' about one man bein' as good as another, and freedom, and the rights of man you know, sir, the sort of slush that such chaps spouts, and that the shellback swallers as greedily as he would a pannikin of egg-flip!" "Yes," I said, "I know.
The thing, whatever it was, had disappeared into the shadows on the lee side of the deck. "Nothing!" I replied, shortly; for I was too bewildered then, at what my eyes had just shown me, to say any more. I wanted to think. The old shellback glanced at me; but only muttered something, and went on his way aft. For a minute, perhaps, I stood there, watching; but could see nothing.
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