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"Well," I demanded, "what have you Englishmen to say to such a proposal?" "Oh, as to that," said Enderby, "me and Chips is dead against it. We knows as it wouldn't work at all. Fancy me sayin': `Svorenssen, nip up aloft and stow that there to'garns'l! and him turnin' round and sayin': `If you wants the to'garns'l stowed, nip up and stow it yourself! Oh no; it wouldn't never do."
Certainly the experience had already befallen him once since the commencement of the voyage; but with men of such limited intelligence as that of Van Ryn and Svorenssen even such an experience as that usually makes so very transitory an impression that it soon fades.
"Of course it would not," I returned. "But what do the other Englishmen think of it?" "Why, I fancy they don't much care, one way or t'other," answered Enderby. "Ye see, sir, they're an ignorant lot, and can easy be talked over by chaps with the gift of the gab, like Svorenssen and Van Ryn.
He will sit for hours, saying never a word but: `Billy, pass me that, or `Billy, take hold of this, and then all of a sudden he'll begin to chatter like a parrot." "Really!" said I. "And what does he chatter about?" "Oh, all sorts of things," answered Billy, "chiefly about what he and Svorenssen went through before they joined us here.
"On second thoughts," said I, "go, you two men, and bring the punt round here to the cove; and Billy and I will come out in the sailing boat to meet you." Svorenssen waved his hand to indicate that he understood, and the two men continued on their way; the Finn, I observed, talking very earnestly to his companion.
I was therefore not very greatly surprised when, after work was over that evening, Svorenssen approached me and said: "See here, Mister, did ye happen to salve the arms chest from the wreck before she washed off the reef and foundered?" "Yes," I said. "What about it?" "Why, just this," he blustered. "Me and Dirk wants a brace of revolvers, cartridges, and a cutlash apiece out of that chest.
But the two seamen turned to without demur, and I soon had reason to congratulate myself upon my acquisition of them; for while Svorenssen revealed an almost professional skill in the use of carpenters' tools, the Dutchman explained that if I would cut out the cutter's sails he would undertake to make them to my entire satisfaction.
The other two aren't so bad; but they'd be a lot better if Svorenssen and Dutchy was out of the ship." "Ah, well," I said, "we are five Englishmen to four of them. If they should take it into their heads to be insubordinate I have no doubt we shall know how to deal with them. And now, I should like to have a look at the log-book. I suppose you know where it is kept?"
Then he leaned over his companion and began whispering hurriedly and excitedly in his ear. "Stop that, Svorenssen!" I exclaimed. "If you have any advice to give that man, speak it aloud, so that I may hear. If it is good advice there is no need to whisper it." "All right, Mister," returned the Finn, "I was only tellin' him not to make a bloomin' fool of hisself.
It was Svorenssen who undertook to tell the story, and he told it in the coarse, uncouth language of the forecastle, embellishing and emphasising it here and there, after the manner of the shellback, by the introduction of words and phrases comprehensible enough to me but confusing and quite unintelligible to a landsman.
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