Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/309

Rh I saw nothing of it, as all the fighting was on the starboard side, and my cabin was to port; but there was a sharp fight on the third morning with a Cape-bound vessel, and again towards the afternoon with one of the North-German Lloyd boats homeward bound to Bremerhaven: as before, Osbart, coming to my rooms, delighted to give me the details of the captures; and that night he was unusually frivolous.

"Poor business to-day," he said, throwing himself into a lounge and lighting a cigar; "not an ounce of specie, and no jewellery to mention and there was no killing, so don't put on that face of yours. Why, my dear boy, it was a perfect farce! I, myself, argued for twenty minutes with an old woman, who sat mewing like a cat on her box, and when I got her off it, thinking she had a thousand in diamonds, it was full of baby linen. And I'll tell you a better thing. An old Dutch Jew threw a two-penny-halfpenny bundle into the sea, and then he was so sick with himself that he went in after it. We hooked him out by the breeches with a boat-hook; but I believe he wished himself dead with the bundle. As for 'Four-Eyes,' he took what he thought was five hundred in notes from a card-player, but they're bad, dear boy, bad every one of them."

"You don't seem very depressed about it," said I.