"You can go if you like," said Kettle, "but remember, I steam away from here as soon as ever I get the cargo out of her, and I wait for no man. And mind not to get us upset in the surf going there. The water round here swarms with sharks, and I shouldn't like any of them to get indigestion."
"Seem trying to make yourself jolly ob--bub--jectiable's morning," grumbled Cranze, and invited Hamilton to accompany him on shore forthwith. "Let's go and see the girls. Ruined cities should have ruined girls and ruined pubs to give us some ruined amusement. We been on this steamer too long, an' we want variety. V'riety's charming. Come along and see ruined v'riety."
Hamilton shrugged his shoulders. "Drunk as usual, are you? You silly owl, whatever ruined cities there may be, are a good fifty miles in the bush."
"'S all you know about it. I can see handsome majestic ruin over there on the beach, an' I'm going to see it 'out further delay. 'S a duty I owe to myself to enlarge the mind by studying the great monuments of the past."
"If you go ashore, you'll be marooned as safe as houses, and Lord knows when the next steamer will call. The place reeks of fever, and as your present state of health is distinctly rocky, you'll catch it, and be dead and out of the way inside a week easily. Look here, don't be an ass."
"Look here yourself. Are you a competent medicated practitioner?"
"Answer me. Are you competent medicated practitioner?"
"Very well then. Don't you presume t'lecture me on state of my health. No reply, please. I don' wan' to be encumbered with your further acquaintance. I wish you a go' morning."
Hamilton looked at Captain Kettle under his brows. "Will you advise me," he said, "what I ought to do."
"I should say it would be healthier for you to let him have his own way."
"Thanks," said Hamilton, and turned away. "I'll act on that advice."
Now the next few movements of Mr. Cranze are wrapped in a certain degree of mystery. He worried a very busy third mate, and got tripped on the hard deck for his pains; he was ejected forcibly from the engineers' mess-room, where it was supposed he had designs on the whisky; and he was rescued by the carpenter from an irate half-breed Mosquito Indian, who seemed to have reasons for desiring his blood there and then on the spot. But how else he passed the time, and as to how he got over the side and into the water, there is no evidence to show.