‘I am off,’ he says—just like this.
‘It isn’t half-past one yet,’ says I; ‘you might snatch a smoke first.’
I thought he meant it was time for him to go down to his work.
When I understood what he was up to, my arms fell—so!
Can’t get a man like that every day, you know, sir; a regular devil for sailing a boat; ready to go out miles to sea to meet ships in any sort of weather.
More than once a captain would come in here full of it, and the first thing he would say would be,
‘That’s a reckless sort of a lunatic you’ve got for water-clerk, Egstrom.
I was feeling my way in at daylight under short canvas when there comes flying out of the mist right under my forefoot a boat half under water, sprays going over the mast-head, two frightened niggers on the bottom boards, a yelling fiend at the tiller.
Hey! hey!
Ship ahoy! ahoy!
Captain!
Hey! hey!
Egstrom & Blake’s man first to speak to you!
Hey! hey!
Egstrom & Blake!
Hallo! hey! whoop!
Kick the niggers—out reefs—a squall on at the time—shoots ahead whooping and yelling to me to make sail and he would give me a lead in—more like a demon than a man.
Never saw a boat handled like that in all my life.
Couldn’t have been drunk—was he?
Such a quiet, soft-spoken chap too—blush like a girl when he came on board. . . .’
I tell you, Captain Marlow, nobody had a chance against us with a strange ship when Jim was out.
The other ship-chandlers just kept their old customers, and . . .”
‘Egstrom appeared overcome with emotion.
‘“Why, sir—it seemed as though he wouldn’t mind going a hundred miles out to sea in an old shoe to nab a ship for the firm.
If the business had been his own and all to make yet, he couldn’t have done more in that way. And now . . . all at once . . . like this!
Thinks I to myself:
‘Oho! a rise in the screw—that’s the trouble—is it?’
‘All right,’ says I, ‘no need of all that fuss with me, Jimmy.
Just mention your figure.
Anything in reason.’
He looks at me as if he wanted to swallow something that stuck in his throat.
‘I can’t stop with you.’
‘What’s that blooming joke?’ I asks.
He shakes his head, and I could see in his eye he was as good as gone already, sir.
So I turned to him and slanged him till all was blue.
‘What is it you’re running away from?’ I asks. ‘Who has been getting at you?
What scared you?
You haven’t as much sense as a rat; they don’t clear out from a good ship.
Where do you expect to get a better berth?—you this and you that.’
I made him look sick, I can tell you.
‘This business ain’t going to sink,’ says I.
He gave a big jump.
‘Good-bye,’ he says, nodding at me like a lord; ‘you ain’t half a bad chap, Egstrom.
I give you my word that if you knew my reasons you wouldn’t care to keep me.’
‘That’s the biggest lie you ever told in your life,’ says I;
‘I know my own mind.’
He made me so mad that I had to laugh.
‘Can’t you really stop long enough to drink this glass of beer here, you funny beggar, you?’
I don’t know what came over him; he didn’t seem able to find the door; something comical, I can tell you, captain.
I drank the beer myself.