United States or Jordan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There's a fireman and a trimmer, both English; there's a third-class passenger a Dago of some sort, I think he is, that was a ganger on the Congo railway and there's Mr. Dayton-Philipps; and if you send me along your nigger stonemason, that'll make a good, strong ship's company." "Dayton-Philipps!" said Image.
"I believe," said Dayton-Philipps to him once when they were taking a spell together at the clanking pumps, "you really glory in finding yourself in this beastly mess." "I have got to earn out the salvage of this ship somehow," Kettle shouted back to him through the windy darkness, "and I don't much care what work comes between now and when I handle the check." "You've got a fine confidence.
Do not fear-a, captain; you shall have money for finding sheep; you shall have some of our salvage." Dayton-Philipps, who was standing near, and knew the little sailor's views, looked for an outbreak. But Kettle held himself in, and still spoke to the man civilly. "That's good English you talk," he said. "Do all your crowd understand the language?"
"Set of blooming pirates," said Kettle. But Dayton-Philipps seemed to view the situation from a different point. "I'm rather thinking we are the pirates. How about those three we've got on board? This sort of press-gang work isn't quite approved of nowadays, is it, Skipper?" "They no speakee English," said Kettle drily.
Dayton-Philipps flushed slightly, and then he laughed. "I suppose that's intended to be nasty," he said. "Well, Captain, I shall have to prove to you that we soldiers are equal to a bit of manual labor sometimes. By the way, I don't want to interfere in a personal matter, but I'd take it as a favor if you wouldn't kill Strake quite. I rather like him."
It might be the one chance in my life, sir, of getting a balance at the bank, and I'm not going to miss it." "Ho!" said Dayton-Philipps. "If you don't like to come, you needn't," said Kettle. "But I'm going to have the stonemason and the Dago, and those two coal-heavers. Perhaps you'd better go back. It will be wet, hard work here; no way the sort of job to suit a soldier."
Kettle had intended to make a Channel port, but a gale hustled him north round Land's End, "and you see," he said to Dayton-Philipps, "what I get for not being sufficiently trustful. The old girl's papers are made out to Cardiff, and here we are pushed round into the Bristol Channel. By James! look, there's a tug making up to us. Thing like that makes you feel homey, doesn't it, sir?"
"God bore a hand there, sir," he shouted through the wind. "If I'd tried to straighten her up like that without outside help, every man here would have been fish-chop this minute." Even Dayton-Philipps, sceptical though he might be, began to think there was "something in it" as the voyage went on. To begin with, the leak stopped.
"My man," said Kettle, "I'll meet you and make it £25, and I'll see you in Aden before I give a penny more. You can take that, or sheer off." "Throw us your blooming rope," said the tug skipper. "There, sir," said Kettle sotto voce to Dayton-Philipps, "you see the marvellousness of it? God has stood by me to the very end. I've saved at least £10 over that towage, and, by James!
"Anything to oblige," said Kettle, and took his thumb out of the third mate's windpipe. "And now, sir, as you've so to speak signed on for duty here, away with you on deck and get those four other beauties up out of the boat." Dayton-Philipps touched his hat and grinned. "Ay, ay, sir," he said, and went back up the companion.
Word Of The Day