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"Be jabers, it is the longboat, sorr!" he exclaimed at length; "and faix, sorr, I belave I can say that baste Moody lookin' out over the gunwale, as if tellin' thim where to steer, with his long black hair and ugly mug, and the cut across his hid which the cap'en giv him wid the butt end of his pistol!
"Now jist you shtop where ye are, me friend," rejoined Garry, putting out his hand to prevent his stirring from his seat. "Sure the cap'en an' me, with Dick Haldane here, will be enough to look afther 'em all." With this he made for the companion-way and descended the "stairs," as Elsie, ignorant of nautical nomenclature, called the ladder, the skipper following close behind him.
"So I tramped it to Hartford that night, got a lodgin' with a first cousin I had there, worked my passage to Boston in a coaster, and after hangin' about Long Wharf day in and day out for a week, I was driv' to ship myself aboard of a whaler, the Lowisy Miles, Twist, cap'en; and I writ from there to Hetty, so't she could know my bearin's so fur, and tell my father.
Macdougall almost boiled over with anger when he heard the skipper ask me. His freckled face looked just like a turkey's egg boiled! "Vara weel, vara weel, Cap'en Billings," said he, with a mock deference that little disguised his rage: "but I'd ha'e you to know that I didn't ship aboard here to mess wi' 'prentice lads."
"Nonsense," said I. "The rascal, perhaps, is another spy like that chap who led us into the stockade trap! I ain't going out of the straight road the cap'en laid down for us to steer. He said the column was to go west sou'-west by compass, and west sou'-west, Larry, I'm going!"
"Mr Stoddart directed me to tell the cap'en that he may go on ahead as usual, as he likes, for everything has been made taut and secure below and there need be no fear of another mishap. He says he intends driving the engines as they were never driven before, and he has put every fireman and oiler in the stoke-hold on the job."
"Aye, sure, it is him thrue enuff," said Mick, stooping down and raising up the prostrate figure in his arms. "Them murdering thayves hev kilt the poor cap'en entoirely!" Mick's dead man, however, did a most extraordinary thing for one who was supposed to have departed this life. He first sneezed, and then opened his eyes. Next he spoke.
"Ours was the Lizard; didn't you notice Cap'en Gillespie taking the bearings of it as we passed this afternoon?" "Yes, sir. I saw him with his sextant, as you told me that queer triangular thing was," said I; "but I didn't know what he was doing. I thought our starting-place was the Thames? We must have gone miles and miles since we left the Downs."
Consequently, the brig couldn't help herself but go straight onward, when the trades were shoving her along and while nobody wanted her to tack, or beat up, or otherwise perform any of those delicate little points of seamanship which a true sailor likes to see his ship go through, almost against his own interest, sometimes, as far as hard work is concerned in reefing and furling and taking in sail, or piling on the canvas and `letting her rip. So long as nothing of this sort was wanted from her the brig was as easy-going as you could wish and all probably that Cap'en Jiggins thought her; but, you had only just to try to get her to sail up in the wind's eye or run with the breeze a bit ahead of the beam, and you'd soon have seen for yourself how cantankerous she could be!
It fell out, too, that Mrs MacStinger was in a charming temper mild and placid as a house lamb; and Captain Cuttle's conscience suffered terrible twinges, when she came up to inquire if she could cook him nothing for his dinner. 'A nice small kidney-pudding now, Cap'en Cuttle, said his landlady: 'or a sheep's heart. Don't mind my trouble. 'No thank'ee, Ma'am, returned the Captain.
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