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The introduction appears insufficient; but Nares knew what he was doing. The sight of her old neighbourly depredator shivering at the door in tatters, the very oddity of his appeal, touched a soft spot in the spinster's heart.
"Every man to his trade, captain," said I. "You're a sailor, and you've given me plenty of points; but I am an artist, and allow me to inform you this is quite as strange as all the rest. The knife is a palette-knife; the pencil a Winsor and Newton, and a B B B at that. A palette-knife and a B B B on a tramp brig! It's against the laws of nature." "It would sicken a dog, wouldn't it?" said Nares.
Small wonder if we waded callously in blood and food. It was perhaps about ten in the forenoon when the scene was interrupted. Nares, who had just ripped open a fresh mat, drew forth, and slung at his feet, among the rice, a papered tin box. "How's that?" he shouted.
Nares went below, fetched up his binocular, and fell into a silent perusal of the sea-line; I also, with my unaided eyesight.
As I had predicted to Nares, I stood and kicked myself. Here was I come home again, my honour saved; there was my friend in want of rest, nursing, and a generous diet; and I asked myself, with Falstaff, "What is in that word honour? what is that honour?" and, like Falstaff, I told myself that it was air. "Jim!" said I. "Loudon!" he gasped, and jumped from his chair and stood shaking.
"It won't do, Loudon; it's nonsense on the face of it! I don't say but what you and Nares did your best; I'm sure, of course, you did; but I do say you got fooled. I say the stuff is in that ship to-day, and I say I mean to get it." "There is nothing in the ship, I tell you, but old wood and iron!" said I. "You'll see," said Jim. "Next time I go myself.
"There's one thing I can put beyond doubt, at all events," I cried, relinquishing my dinner and getting briskly afoot. "There was that Kanaka I saw in the bar with Captain Trent, the fellow the newspapers and ship's articles made out to be a Chinaman. I mean to rout his quarters out and settle that." "All right," said Nares. "I'll lazy off a bit longer, Mr. Dodd; I feel pretty rocky and mean."
Boast for boast; it was always thus with Nares and Pinkerton the two vainest men of my acquaintance. And having thus reinstated himself in his own opinion, the captain rose, and, with a couple of his stiff nods, departed. "Jim," I cried, as the door closed behind him, "I don't like that man." "You've just got to, Loudon," returned Jim.
Hence Dodd's father, and Pinkerton, and Nares, and the Dromedary picnics, and the railway work in New South Wales the last an unsolicited testimonial from the powers that be, for the tale was half written before I saw Carthew's squad toil in the rainy cutting at South Clifton, or heard from the engineer of his "young swell."
I cried, getting sharply to my feet, for we had been some time seated. "I wish it were the other. I don't don't relish going home to Jim with this!" "See here," said Nares, with ready tact, "I must be getting aboard. Johnson's in the brig annexing chandlery and canvas, and there's some things in the Norah that want fixing against we go to sea. Would you like to be left here in the chicken-ranch?
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