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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.
Heroes? To be sure we were heroes. What is being shot at a mile off, or a hundred yards off, to being shot at by the very heavens while one hangs over the gaping trenches of the sea? There is not an old shellback alive who has clung between angry heaven and the grey-green pastures of the deep but deserves a Victoria Cross for unconscious, dutiful, grumbling, growling valour.
"From now on, yours is revoked," declared Frank, "but, seriously, Bill, do you know anything about shark fishing?" "Do I?" demanded the old shellback.
The Second nodded, gravely. Then I heard him mutter, in a low voice, and the Old Man replied; after which he turned to me again. "Look here, Jessop," he said. "I'm going to talk straight to you. You strike me as being a cut above the ordinary shellback, and I think you've sense enough to hold your tongue." "I've got my mate's ticket, Sir," I said, simply.
He had sailed the boat ladened with wire netting and heavy goods from Bowen, 200 miles south, and was on his way to his selection, 100 miles further north. A wiry, slight man though a real "shellback," one who had been steeped in and saturated with every sea, was "giving the sea best," nerve-shaken, so he said and yet sailing a cutter with but 3 or 4 inches of free board "single-handed."
It was only when a breaking of diplomatic relations altogether was threatened that Willie was sacrificed on the altar of "tings." I forget the price, but I think that we threw in an axe, which was one of the trifles which the father lacked and in this of all countries! The word was no sooner spoken than our shellback again excelled himself.
Bill Blunt was called into the consultation, for the old shellback had established his worth as a man of action. The Barang could muster sixteen men besides the skipper, mate, Little, Gordon, and Blunt, twenty-one in all. And the surrounding land offered a vast and impenetrable concealment for foes from that side. "An' that's whar she'll bust, genelmen," stated Blunt with decision. "Cos why?
Here was the true key to the Wilcannia shower; here was the under-side of my imagined precaution against ophthalmia; here was the hidden purpose of that repetitional picking and sorting of the hawker's stock which had left Jack the Shellback his Hobson's choice in coats; here was a Wesleyan converging of the whole vast order of the universe toward the happiest issue.
Of course nothing was settled definite yet no dates nor anything; but probably before long there'd be a nice little home adorning a certain place he'd kept his eye on, and someone there keeping a light in the window for him and so on. It sounded almost too good to be true that this old shellback had been harpooned at last.
They all knew him. Is there a spot on earth where such a man is unknown, an ominous survival testifying to the eternal fitness of lies and impudence? A taciturn long-armed shellback, with hooked fingers, who had been lying on his back smoking, turned in his bed to examine him dispassionately, then, over his head, sent a long jet of clear saliva towards the door. They all knew him!
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