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I soon had to exercise my new office of interpreter, for the man began shouting again on seeing Mr Jellaby and the coxswain near him. "Ah del buque!" he screamed out, holding up, as if to signal with it, one of his emaciated hands, the bony fingers of which looked like those of a skeleton. "Como se llama el buque?" "He says `ship ahoy! sir," I explained to the doctor. "`What ship is that?"
"I I don't quite know, you know," answered the reverend gentleman, removing the handkerchief after some hesitation and proceeding to examine it carefully as if fearing the worst; but, finding now no trace of blood on its snowy surface, he became reassured and said, in a more cheery tone, "no, not cut, I think, only a severe contusion, thank you, Mr Jellaby. The pain has nearly gone now!"
"Ah, good morning, Mr Bitpin," he said, looking somewhat surprised at seeing that gentleman there. "I thought Mr Jellaby had the morning watch to-day?" "So he had, sir," answered the lieutenant, hastily putting down his empty cup under the binnacle out of sight of the commander, who he knew disliked anything out of order on deck.
I felt quite sorry at having hurt his feelings, he looked so chagrined; but, before I could say anything in excuse for the apathetic way in which I had received his intelligence, Mr Bitpin, who had overheard the conversation, came to my rescue. "Nonsense, Jellaby!" he said. "What can a boy like that know about girls?
"I really beg your pardon, doctor, but I could not be any quicker; for the captain ordered me to examine the vessel and see if I could find her papers." He thereupon described to Doctor Nettleby what the three of us had seen in the cabin; when that gentleman was as much shocked as we were. "Can I do anything, Jellaby?" he asked. "Are you sure they were all lifeless?"
"Well, that's a rum start, a fellow complaining of not being able to make a living out of the dead!" said Joe Jellaby to me, smiling; and then, turning again to the man he continued, "now, tell me what all this row is about?" Here the Jew, who introduced himself as the keeper of a lodging-house in Portsea, put in his word. "Dis shcoundrel vas owe me five blooming pounds," he cried out excitedly.
A week or so later, after all the details of our treaty with the Chinese Government had been settled, and Lord Elgin departed from Pekin on his way to Europe on the conclusion of his highly successful mission, we likewise weighed anchor before the Gulf of Pechili should be closed by the ice and our egress therefrom barred for the winter months; and then, bidding a long farewell to the poetically-named but "beastly hole of a place," as Mr Jellaby called it, the "Bay of the Wide-spreading-sand Islands," we sailed for Hong Kong.
The rolling of the ship and the clean breach which the sea made across the open deck amidships rendered the task of reaching the poor fellow all the harder; but, watching his chance between the lurches of the water-logged barque and clambering over the wreckage that rilled the waist from the forecastle up to the main hatchway, Mr Jellaby was able at last to get near enough to hear the voice of the man, who was a most ragged and miserable-looking creature, and was yelling out wildly as if he were insane in the intervals of his frantic motions, when there was a lull in the noise of the waves.
"Yes, by Jove!" cried Mr Jellaby, who stood near, holding on to one of the davits, jumping up on the gunwale to have a better view. "There he is waving one of his arms now!"
Time enough for him to think of the petticoats when he's twenty years older; and then he'll be a fool if he runs after them as much as you do!" "Ah, you're jealous, Bitpin, because you're not a lady's man!" retorted Mr Jellaby, recovering his good humour in a moment, as he always did, no matter how much he might be put out.
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