I could swear the first
of them was asleep in half a minute.
"We'll have to clean up for'ard, or we'll be having the sticks about
our ears," the mate said, already starting to depart. "Get the men
along, Mr. Mellaire, and call out the carpenter."
CHAPTER XXXVI
And no westing! We have been swept back three degrees of casting
since the night our visitors came on board. They are the great
mystery, these three men of the sea. "Horn Gypsies," Margaret calls
them; and Mr. Pike dubs them "Dutchmen." One thing is certain, they
have a language of their own which they talk with one another. But
of our hotch-potch of nationalities fore and aft there is no person
who catches an inkling of their language or nationality.
Mr. Mellaire raised the theory that they were Finns of some sort, but
this was indignantly denied by our big-footed youth of a carpenter,
who swears he is a Finn himself. Louis, the cook, avers that
somewhere over the world, on some forgotten voyage, he has
encountered men of their type; but he can neither remember the voyage
nor their race.
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