Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader | Page 4

to sea on your own account.--you've got a pair of good arms and legs,--you can swim! Besides," continued the captain, dropping the tone of sarcasm in which this was said, and assuming a more careless and good-natured air, "you were singing something not long since, if I mistake not, about 'farewell to the rolling sea,' which leads me to think you will not object to a short cruise on shore for a change, especially on such a beautiful island as this is."
"I'm your man, capting," cried the impulsive seaman, at the same time giving his oar a pull that well-nigh spun the boat round. "And, to say wot's the plain truth, d'ye see, I'm not sorry to ha' done with your schooner; for, although she is as tight a little craft as any man could wish for to go to sea in, I can't say much for the crew,--saving your presence, Dick," he added, glancing over his shoulder at the surly-looking man who pulled the bow oar. "Of all the rascally set I ever clapped eyes on, they seems to me the worst. If I didn't know you for a sandal-wood trader, I do believe I'd take ye for a pirate."
"Don't speak ill of your messmates behind their backs, Jo," said the captain, with a slight frown. "No good and true man ever does that."
"No more I do," replied John Bumpus, while a deep red color suffused his bronzed countenance. "No more I do, leastwise if they wos here I'd say it to their faces; for they're a set of as ill-tongued villains as I ever had the misfortune to--"
"Silence!" exclaimed the captain, suddenly, in a voice of thunder.
Few men would have ventured to disobey the command given by such a man, but John Bumpus was one of those few. He did indeed remain silent for two seconds, but it was the silence of astonishment.
"Capting," said he, seriously, "I don't mean no offense, but I'd have you to know that I engaged to work for you, not to hold my tongue at your bidding, d'ye see? There ain't the man living as'll make Jo Bumpus shut up w'en he's got a mind to--"
The captain put an abrupt end to the remarks of his refractory seaman by starting up suddenly in fierce anger and seizing the tiller, apparently with the intent to fell him. He checked himself, however, as suddenly, and breaking into a loud laugh, cried:--
"Come, Jo, you must admit that there is at least one living man who has made you 'shut up' before you had finished what you'd got to say."
John Bumpus, who had thrown up his left arm to ward off the anticipated blow, and dropped his oar in order to clench his right fist, quietly resumed his oar, and shook his head gravely for nearly a minute, after which he made the following observation:--
"Capting, I've seed, in my experience o' life, that there are some constitootions as don't agree with jokin'; an' yours is one on 'em. Now, if you'd take the advice of a plain man, you'd never try it on. You're a grave man by natur', and you're so bad at a joke that a feller can't quite tell w'en you're a-doin' of it. See, now! I do declare I wos as near drivin' you right over the stern o' your own boat as could be, only by good luck I seed the twinkle in your eye in time."
"Pull away, my lad," said the captain, in the softest tones of his deep voice, at the same time looking his reprover straight in the face.
There was something in the tone in which that simple command was given, and in the look by which it was accompanied, that effectually quelled John Bumpus in spite of himself. Violence had no effect on John, because in most cases he was able to meet it with superior violence, and in all cases he was willing to try. But to be put down in this mild way was perplexing. The words were familiar, the look straightforward and common enough. He could not understand it at all, and being naturally of a philosophical turn of mind, he spent the next three minutes in a futile endeavor to analyze his own feelings. Before he had come to any satisfactory conclusion on the subject, the boat's keel grated on the white sand of the shore.
Now, while all that we have been describing in the last and present chapters was going on, a very different series of events was taking place on the coral-island; for there, under the pleasant shade of the cocoanut palms, a tall, fair, and handsome youth was walking lightly down the green slopes toward the shore in anticipation of the arrival of the schooner, and a naked, dark-skinned savage was