We would hardly spare the time to get a bite of salt
horse--neither eat nor sleep. We could hardly stand when the watches
were mustered on deck. Talk of gambling!" He dropped the reminiscent
tone to add the information, "I was bred to the sea from a boy, you
know."
Schomberg had fallen into a reverie, but without losing the sense of
impending calamity. The next words he heard were:
"I got on all right at sea, too. Worked up to be mate. I was mate of a
schooner--a yacht, you might call her--a special good berth too, in the
Gulf of Mexico, a soft job that you don't run across more than once in a
lifetime. Yes, I was mate of her when I left the sea to follow him."
Ricardo tossed up his chin to indicate the room above; from which
Schomberg, his wits painfully aroused by this reminder of Mr. Jones's
existence, concluded that the latter had withdrawn into his bedroom.
Ricardo, observing him from under lowered eyelids, went on:
"It so happened that we were shipmates."
"Mr Jones, you mean? Is he a sailor too?"
Ricardo raised his eyelids at that.
"He's no more Mr. Jones than you are," he said with obvious pride. "He a
sailor! That just shows your ignorance. But there! A foreigner can't be
expected to know any better. I am an Englishman, and I know a gentleman
at sight. I should know one drunk, in the gutter, in jail, under the
gallows.
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