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"Aw," said Cap'n Jacka again, and shut his mouth tight. Young Dick Hewitt's father had shares in the Company and money to buy votes beside. "What do'ee think?" asked Mr. Job, still slanting his eye down his nose. "I'll go home an' take my wife's opinion," said Cap'n Jacka. So when he got home he told it all to his funny little wife that he doted on like the apple of his one eye.
No; Captain Jacka must find a new billet. But in a month or so, when folks had given up sympathising for Mary Polly hated to be pitied, and gave them no encouragement he saw plain enough that there was no billet for him in a small place like Polperro where Mr. Job ruled the roost.
For, till you said that, I'd clean forgot the sifter for your cuddy fire. Mustn't waste cinders now that you're only a mate." Being a woman, she couldn't forego that little dig; but she got up there and then and gave the old boy a kiss. So Cap'n Jacka took his congees at his own door, and turned, half-way down the street, and waved a good-bye with the cinder-sifter.
All I managed to take was this young French orcifer here; but I thought, maybe, that you having a handier craft " Jacka chuckled a bit; but he wasn't one to keep a joke going for spite. "Look-y-here, Cap'n," he said; "I'll hear your tale when we get into dock, and you shall hear mine.
I reckon she'll come about as fast as th' old Pride, and if she don't sit nigher the wind than the new revenue cutter it'll be your sailmaker's fault." "That's a first-class report," said Mr. Job. "I was thinking of offering you the post of mate in her." Cap'n Jacka felt poorly all of a sudden. "Aw," he asked, "who's to be skipper, then?" "The Company was thinkin' of young Dick Hewitt."
Then he saw what had happened: the fresh hand at the wheel had dozed off where he stood and let the Van der Werf run up in the wind. The fellow was little more than a boy, and white in the face with want of sleep. Captain Jacka was always a kind-hearted man.
"When Britain first at Heaven's command," whistled Jacka; and the Widow Scantlebury, two doors up the street, was properly taken in. An hour later, when the news of Jacka's dismissal was all over the town, she had to sit down and consider.
So they parted; and by half-past ten Cap'n Jacka had laid the Bean Pheasant's head north-and-by-west, and was reaching along nicely for home with a stiff breeze and nothing to do but keep the pumps going and attend to his eating and drinking between whiles.
She had sprung on them out of the thick weather. But now Cap'n Jacka could see the white line on her and the ports quite plain, and not two miles away. "What nation?" he bawled. "I can't make out as she carries any flag. Losh me! if there bain't another!"
"And don't flash that plaguey thing in my eyes, as you're doing." For Jacka was standing in the sunshine now, with the tinplate in his hands blazing away like a looking-glass. "Very well, sir. Perhaps you'll allow me to fetch a hat out of the cabin; for my head feels the heat powerful, being so bald. They do say it twinkles a bit, too, when the sun catches it the right way."
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