"I'll do that, you may lay your heart on it," said the operator. "But Mr. I-don't-know-what-your-name-is, look here. Hadn't you better stay? I'll see things are put all right. But if you go off with those two sharks, it might be dangerous."
"Thank you, kindly, sir," said Kettle; "but I'm a man that's been accustomed to look after myself all the world over, and I'm not likely to get hurt now. Those two may be sharks, as you say, but I'm not altogether a simple little lamb myself."
"I shall be a bit uneasy for you. You're a good soul whoever you may be, and I'd like to do something for you if I could."
"Then, sir," said Kettle, "just keep quiet, here, and get on with your work contradicting that wire, and don't send for any of those little Portuguese soldiers with guns to see us off. It's a bad beach, and we mayn't get off first try, and if they started to annoy us whilst we were at work, I might have to shoot some of them, which would be a trouble."
"I'll see to that," said the operator. "We'll just shake hands if you don't mind, before you go. There's more man to the cubic inch about you than in any other fellow I've come across for a long time. I've no club at home now, or I'd ask you to look me up. But I dare say we shall meet again some time. So long."
"Good-by, sir," said Kettle, and shook the operator by the hand. Then he turned, and drove the other two raiders before him out of the house, and down to the beach, and, with the Krooboys, applied himself to launching the surf-boat through the breakers.
"Run the old shop into a war, would you?" he soliloquized to two very limp, unconscious figures, as the Krooboys got the surf-boat afloat after the third upset. "It's queer what some men will do for money." And then, a minute later, he muttered to himself: "By James! look at that dawn coming up behind the island there; yellow as a lemon. Now, that is fine. I can make a bit of poetry out of that."
"Her cargo'll have shifted," said the third mate, "and when she got that list her people will have felt frightened and left her."
"She's a scary look to her, with her yard-arms spiking every other sea," said Captain Image, "and her decks like the side of a house. I shouldn't care to navigate a craft that preferred to lie down on her beam ends myself."