Page:The Firm of Gridlestone (1890).djvu/249

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"He must be dangerous when he is like that?" Tom remarked.

"He is that. He emptied a sax-shooter down the deck last bout he had, and nigh perforated the carpenter. Another time he scoots after the cook—chased him with a handspike in his hand right up the rigging to the cross-trees. If the cook hadn't slid down the backstay of the mast, he'd ha' been obeetuarised."

Tom could not refrain from laughing at the last expression. "That's a new word," he said.

"Ha!" his companion cried with great satisfaction, "it is, is it? Then we are quits now on the hypochondriacal." He was so pleased that he chuckled to himself for some minutes in the depths of his tawny beard. "Yes," he continued at last, "he is dangerous to us at times, and he is dangerous to you. This is atween oorsels, as man to man, and is said withoot prejudice, but he do go on when he is in they fits aboot the firm, and aboot insurances, and rotten ships, and ither such things, which is all vera well when sequestrated amang gentlemen like oorsels, but sounds awfu' bad when it fa's on the ignorant tympanums of common seamen."

"It's scandalous," Tom said gravely, "that he should spread such reports about his employer. Our ships are old, and some of them, in my opinion, hardly safe, but that's a very different thing from implying, as you hint, that Mr. Girdlestone wishes them to go down."

"We'll no argue aboot that," said the canny Scot. "Muster Girdlestone kens on which side his bread is buttered. He may wish 'em to sink or he may wish 'em to swim. That's no for us to judge. You'll hear him speak o't to-night as like as not, for he's aye on it when he's half over. Here we are, sir. The corner edifice wi' the red blinds in the window."

During this conversation the two had been threading their way through the intricate and dirty lanes which lead up from the water side to the outskirts of Stepney. It was