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Dutch the Diver: or, A Man's Mistake
Dutch the Diver; Or, A Man's Mistake
Story 1-Chapter I.
Story One – Dutch the Diver.
At the Diver’s Office
“I say, Rasp. Confound the man! Rasp, will you leave that fire alone? Do you want to roast me?”
“What’s the good o’ you saying will I leave the fire alone, Mr Pug?” said the man addressed, stoking savagely at the grate; “you know as well as I do that if I leave it half hour you never touches it, but lets it go out.”
Half a scuttle of coals poured on.
“No, no. No more coals, Rasp.”
“They’re on now, Mr Pug,” said Rasp, with a grim grin. “You know how the governor grumbles if the fire’s out, and it’s me as ketches it.”
“The office is insufferably hot now.”
“Good job, too; for it’s cold enough outside, I can tell you; and there’s a draught where I sits just as if you’d got yer ear up again the escape-valve of the air-pump.”
“Get a screen, then,” said the first speaker, impatiently, as he scratched his thick, curly, crisp brown hair with the point of a pair of compasses, and gazed intently at a piece of drawing-paper pinned out upon the desk before him.
“Screen? Bah! What do I want wi’ screens? I can stand wind and cold, and a bit o’ fire, too, for the matter o’ that. I ain’t like some people.”
“Hang it all, Rasp, I wish you’d go,” said the first speaker. “You see how busy I am. What’s the matter with you this morning? Really, you’re about the most disagreeable old man I ever knew.”