Читать книгу The Queen Versus Billy, and Other Stories онлайн

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The first thing I saw, on going to the galley for my morning cup of coffee, was poor Bo planted on the beach, where, as far as I could see, she must have passed the night, sitting with unshaken determination on her camphor-wood chest. Taking the schooner’s dinghy, I pulled myself over to the Ransom, bent on a fresh scheme to retrieve the situation. The first person I ran across on board was the Beautiful Man himself, who hailed me with the greatest good humour, and asked what the devil had brought me there so early.

“To put you off this ship,” I replied. “When the captain has heard my story, I don’t think you will ever see Sydney, Mr. Beautiful Man.”

“W’y, w’at’s this you have against me?” he asked, with a very creditable show of astonishment.

I pointed to the melancholy spectre on the beach.

“W’at of it?” he said. “She ain’t mine: she’s yours.”

“You wait till I see the captain!” I retorted.

“A fat lot he’ll care,” said Hinton. “The fack is, as between man and man, I don’t mind telling you he’d shake me if he dared, the old hunks; but I’ve got an order for my passage from the owner, and it will be worth his job for him to disregard it. My word! I thought he was going to bounce me last night, for he was tearing up and down here like a royal Bengal tiger in a cage of blue fire, giving me w’at he called a piece of his mind. A dirty low mind it was, too, and I don’t mind who hears me say it. But I stood on my order. I said, ‘Here it is,’ I said, ‘and I beg to inform you that I’m going to syle in this ship to Sydney. Put me ashore if you dare,’ I said.”