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Hunting the Skipper: The Cruise of the «Seafowl» Sloop
Hunting the Skipper: The Cruise of the «Seafowl» Sloop
Chapter One.
H.M.S. “Seafowl.”
“Dicky, dear boy, it’s my impression that we shall see no blackbird’s cage to-day.”
“And it’s my impression, Frank Murray, that if you call me Dicky again I shall punch your head.”
“Poor fellow! Liver, decidedly,” said the first speaker, in a mock sympathetic tone. “Look here, old chap, if I were you, I’d go and ask Jones to give me a blue pill, to be followed eight hours later by one of his delicious liqueurs, all syrup of senna.”
“Ugh!” came in a grunt of disgust, followed by a shudder. “Look here, Frank, if you can’t speak sense, have the goodness to hold your tongue.”
The speakers were two manly looking lads in the uniform of midshipmen of the Royal Navy, each furnished with a telescope, through which he had been trying to pierce the hot thick haze which pretty well shut them in, while as they leaned over the side of Her Majesty’s ship Seafowl, her sails seemed to be as sleepy as the generally smart-looking crew, the light wind which filled them one minute gliding off the next, and leaving them to flap idly as they apparently dozed off into a heavy sleep.
“There, don’t be rusty, old fellow,” said the first speaker.
“Then don’t call me by that absurd name —Dicky– as if I were a bird!”
“Ha, ha! Why not?” said Frank merrily. “You wouldn’t have minded if I had said ‘old cock.’”
“Humph! Perhaps not,” said the young man sourly.
“There, I don’t wonder at your being upset; this heat somehow seems to soak into a fellow and melt all the go out of one. I’m as soft as one of those medusae – jellyfish – what do you call them? – that float by opening and shutting themselves, all of a wet gasp, as one might say.”