Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/156

142 old woman, not by a cable's-length; we're afloat on a rum job, old lady; and some of us won't go for to pipe when it's the day for payin' off—not by a long way. So you hear; and don't get answerin' of me, for what I spoke's logic, and there's an end of it."

I called him to me, and had it out with him there and then.

"What's in the wind now, Dan," I asked, "that you're preaching to the dog?"

"Ay, that's it," he replied, putting his hand into his pocket for his tobacco-box. "What's in the wind?—why, you'd have to be askin' of it to learn, I fancy."

"Is there any more nonsense amongst the men forward?"

"There's a good deal of talk—maybe more than there should be."

"And what do they talk about? Tell me straight, Dan."

"Well, I've got nothing, for my part, to hide away, and I don't know as they should have; but you know this ship is a dead man’s!"

"Who told you that stuff?"

"No other than our second mate, sir, as sure as I cut this quid. Not as yarns like that affect me; but, you see, some skulls is thick as plate-armour, and some is thin as egg-shells: and when the thin 'uns gets afloat with corpse, why,