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The ex-pilot turned and regarded him fixedly, and the last bit of spirit he was ever known to show flashed up in his face as he spoke. "You're a blamed idiot!" he said rudely. The sun was just rising as the small tub-like steamer, or, to be more correct, steam-barge, the Bulldog, steamed past the sleeping town of Gravesend at a good six knots per hour.
Food ran low, money gave out almost entirely, but they did not give up. When it was stormy and they could not dig, and the ex-pilot was in a talkative vein, he would sit astride the bunk and distribute to his hearers riches more valuable than any they would dig from the Esmeralda hills. At other times he did not talk at all, but sat in a corner and wrote.
The ex-pilot has given us the record of his very brief and inglorious service as a soldier of the South. When this escapade was swiftly ended, he went to the northwest with his brother, who had been appointed lieutenant-governor of Nevada.
"Well, I'm your wife, anyhow," said Martha, "and I'll take care I never lose you again. You shall never go out of my sight again till you die. Never." "Nonsense, my pet," said the captain, exchanging uneasy glances with the ex-pilot. "Nonsense." "It isn't nonsense, Jem," said the lady, as she drew him on to the sofa and sat with her arms round his neck.
"Pot o' stout, bottle o' gin, and two long pipes," said he, as the boy came to the door and eyed the ex-pilot curiously. At all these honest preparations for his welcome the heart of Jackson grew faint within him. "Well, I call it good of you to come all this way to see me," said the captain, after the boy had disappeared; "but you always was warm-hearted, Pepper. And how's the missis?"
The three sat silent, the ex-pilot, with wrinkled brows, trying hard to decipher the lip-language in which the captain addressed him whenever he had an opportunity, but could only dimly guess its purport, when the captain pressed his huge fist into the service as well. Mrs. Pepper rose at length, and went into the back room to prepare tea.
How rude of them!" The others turned hastily in time to see several heads vanish from the window. Captain Crippen was the first to speak. "Jem!" said Mrs. Pepper severely, before he had finished. "Captain Budd!" said Miss Winthrop, flushing. The incensed captain rose to his feet and paced up and down the room. He looked at the ex-pilot, and that small schemer shivered.
In the small front parlour of No. 3, Mermaid Passage, Sunset Bay, Jackson Pepper, ex-pilot, sat in a state of indignant collapse, tenderly feeling a cheek on which the print of hasty fingers still lingered.
"What ails the man? Can't you keep still for five minutes?" The ex-pilot stopped and eyed her solemnly, but, ere he could reply, his heart gave a great bound, for, from behind the geraniums which filled the window, he saw the face of Captain Crippen slowly rise and peer cautiously into the room. Before his wife could follow the direction of her husband's eyes it had disappeared.
The ex-pilot passed the intervening days in a sort of trance, from which he only emerged to take nourishment, or answer the scoldings of his wife. On the eventful Thursday, however, his mood changed, and he went about in such a state of suppressed excitement that he could scarcely keep still. "Lor' bless me!" snapped Mrs. Pepper, as he slowly perambulated the parlour that afternoon.
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