A tall individual, with legs much too thin for a rotund stomach, and
with watery eyes, strolled up and remarked, "Just left her--eh? Quick
work."
He wore a soiled suit of blue flannel with a pair of dirty cricketing
shoes; a dingy gray moustache drooped from his lip, and daylight could
be seen in two places between the rim and the crown of his hat.
"Hallo! what are you doing here?" asked the ex-second-mate of the
Nan-Shan, shaking hands hurriedly.
"Standing by for a job--chance worth taking--got a quiet hint,"
explained the man with the broken hat, in jerky, apathetic wheezes.
The second shook his fist again at the Nan-Shan. "There's a fellow there
that ain't fit to have the command of a scow," he declared, quivering
with passion, while the other looked about listlessly.
"Is there?"
But he caught sight on the quay of a heavy seaman's chest, painted brown
under a fringed sailcloth cover, and lashed with new manila line. He
eyed it with awakened interest.
"I would talk and raise trouble if it wasn't for that damned Siamese
flag. Nobody to go to--or I would make it hot for him. The fraud! Told
his chief engineer--that's another fraud for you--I had lost my nerve.
The greatest lot of ignorant fools that ever sailed the seas.
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