"By Jove, Haldane!" cried Stoddart, who was a man of action if ever
there was one. "The cylinder is all right again and will bear any
pressure now, and I tell you what it is, the old barquey shall steam
along in pursuit of those demons faster than she ever went in her life
since she was launched and engined!"
"I am with you there, old fellow," said Grummet, our third engineer,
hastening towards the stoke-hold. "I'll go down and see the firemen and
stir them up and put some more oilers to work in the screw well, to
lubricate the shaft so as to prevent the bearings from overheating."
"That's your sort, my hearty," said Stoddart. "So you can return on
deck, Haldane, and tell the skipper and Mr Stokes that everything shall
be done down here by us to overhaul your `ghost-ship.'"
He laughed as he uttered this little piece of chaff at my expense, the
story being now the common property of everybody on board, and I
laughed, too, as I ran up the hatchway with my clothes nearly dry again,
even drying in the short space of time I had been in the hot atmosphere
below, although, goodness knows, they had been wet enough when I had
gone down, having had no time or opportunity to shift them after my dip
overboard when taking the line to the drifting boat.
On reaching the main deck I met Spokeshave.
He was coming out from the saloon, and from his puffy face and corpulent
appearance generally, he looked as if he had been making a haul on the
steward's pantry, although he had not long had his dinner and it was a
good way off tea time.
"Hullo!" he cried out on seeing me. "I say, that chap O'Neil is having
a fine go of it playing at doctoring. He has got a lot of ugly long
knives and saws laid out on the cuddy table and I think he's going to
cut off the chap's leg!"
"Which chap do you mean?" I asked; "not the colonel?"
"Aye," said he. "The chap with the moustache and long hair, like
Hamlet, you know!"
"My good chap," said I, "you seem to know a good deal about other chaps,
or think you do, but I never heard before of Hamlet having a moustache
like a life-guardsman! Irving doesn't wear one when he takes the part,
if I recollect right, my joker. You think yourself mighty knowing!"
"Quite so," replied Master Spokeshave, using his favourite phrase as
usual. "But you don't call Irving Shakespeare, Haldane, do ye?"
"I don't know anything of the matter, old boy. I am not so well
informed as you are concerning the dramatic world, Spokeshave. I know
you're a regular authority or `toffer,' if you like, on the subject.
Don't you think, however, you're a bit hard on poor Irving, who, I've no
doubt, would take a word of advice from you if you spoke kindly to him
and without that cruel sarcasm which you're apt to use?"
The little beggar actually sniggered over this, being of the opinion
that I was paying a just tribute to his histrionic acumen and judgement
in things theatrical, on which he prided himself on account of his
having appeared once behind the footlights in a theatre in Liverpool, as
a "super," I believe, and in a part where he had nothing to say!
"Quite so, Haldane; quite so," chuckled Spokeshave, as pleased as Punch
at the imaginary compliment. "_I do_ believe I could teach Irving a
thing or two if I had the mind to!"
"Yes, you donkey, if you _had_ the mind to," said I witheringly, by
giving an emphasis he did not mean to his own words. "`Very like a
whale,' as our old friend Polonius says in the play, the real _Hamlet_,
I mean, my boy, not your version of it. `Very like a whale,' indeed!"
"I'm sure, Mr Haldane," he answered loftily, cocking his long nose in
the air with a supercilious sniff, "I don't know what ye mean."
"And I've no time to waste telling you now," returned I.
At that moment we emerged on the open deck from under the back of the
poop, where we had been losing our time and talking nonsense; and,
looking towards the bridge forward, I saw Colonel Vereker, the very
person about whom we had been speaking, standing by the side of the
skipper.
"O, Lor', Spokeshave, what a crammer!" I cried. "You said not a moment
ago that Garry O'Neil was about to cut off the colonel's leg, while
there he is standing there, all right!"
"I didn't say he had cut it off yet," he retorted; "I said he was going
to cut it off. O'Neil told me so himself."
"Then," said I, "instead of cutting off the poor colonel's leg, he was
only `pulling your leg,' my joker!"
The cross-grained little beggar, however, did not seem to quite
understand the term I employed thus in joke, though it was used at sea
to express the fact of "taking a rise" out of any one, and a common
enough saying.
"I'm not the only fellow who tells crammers," he grimly muttered. "How
about that yarn of yours of the blessed `ghost-ship' you saw the other
night, I'd like to know. I believe, too, that the colonel, as you call
him, is only an impostor and that the skipper is going on just such a
wild-goose chase after this ship of his, which he says was captured by
pirates, as he did that Friday hunting your _Flying Dutchman_! wasting
our time with your idiotic story. Pirates and niggers, indeed! Why,
this chap, I'll bet, is a nigger himself, and more of a pirate than any
one we'll come across if we steam from here to the North Pole. Put that
in your pipe and smoke it, Dick Haldane; you and your confounded `ghost-
ship' together! Such utter humbug and nonsense, and thinking you take
people in with such yarns in these days!"