Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/328

314 "And if not?"

He shrugged his shoulders and was silent; but anon he asked again what I thought of a long, rakish-looking steamer lying some miles away on the starboard quarter, and when I had satisfied him he said— "Come downstairs and get some wine into you, boy"; and I went below to his small and not very elegant cabin, where he put champagne and glasses on the table.

"Let's drink against the thirst we'll have to-morrow," cried he, getting quite jovial, and pouring the Pommery down his throat as though it had been beer. "This is an occasion such as we shan't often know—the old ship against Europe, and one man against the lot of them! Why, lad, if it wasn't for the thought of the oil, I'd get up and dance. The lubbers could no more lay a finger on me, given fair fight, than they could touch the moon. You see, it's just the oil that Karl's feared all along; drive by gas, and you want twenty times the grease in your cylinders that you'll ever need in a steam-ship. If there hadn't been that break-up north, we'd never have been in this hole; but that's one of the risks of a game like this, and I'll play my hand out."

He went on to talk of many other things, but as he did not speak of his own past, or of the ship, I began to nod with sleep; and