I said no more, but made my way on deck with a suspicion in me that the fellow had lied, though I hardly knew why I should think so. I trudged forward, and finding three or four of the men hanging about the galley I pulled out five shillings and gave the money to one of them, saying that I was going aloft and wished to pay my footing, for I was in no temper to be chased and worried. This made me free of the rigging, into which I sprang and had soon shinned as high as the topgallant-yard, upon which I perched myself so noiselessly that the man who overhung it on the other side of the mast and who was drowsily chewing upon a quid of tobacco with his eye screwed into Wilfrid’s lovely telescope, had no notion I was alongside of him. I coughed softly, for I had known seamen to lose their lives when up aloft by being suddenly startled. He put a whiskered face past the mast and stared at me as if I was Old Nick, out of the minutest pair of eyes I ever saw in the human head, mere gimlet-holes they seemed for the admission of light. ‘Thinking of your sweetheart, Jack?’ said I with a laugh, ignorant of his name but counting Jack to be a sure word. ‘Can’t rightly say _what_ I was a-thinking of, sir,’ he answered hoarsely; ‘’warn’t my sweetheart anyways, seeing that the only gell I was ever really partial to sarved me as her ledship sarved Sir Wilfrid yonder,’ indicating the quarterdeck with a sideways motion of his head. ‘Cut stick, eh?’ said I. ‘Wuss than that, sir,’ he answered. ‘If she’d ha’ taken herself off and stopped at that I dunno as I should have any occasion to grumble; but she prigged the furniture that I’d laid in agin getting married. Ay, _prigged_ it. The boiling amounted to fourteen pound tew, a bloomin’ lot o’ money for a poor seafaring man to be robbed of for the sake of a master chimney-sweep.’ He cast a slow disgusted look round and expectorated with an air of loathing. ‘I hope you got the master chimney-sweep locked up,’ said I. ‘No fear!’ cried he, talking very fast; ‘smite me, your honour, if that there gell didn’t tarn to and swear that that furniture was hers, bought out of her own savings, and that she guv me the money to order it with. Thinking o’ my sweetheart!’ he grumbled, lifting the telescope in an abstracted manner to his eye, ‘if it worn’t for women dummed if this ’ere earth wouldn’t be worth a-living in.’ I smothered a laugh, and catching sight of the sail shining faintly in the blue air, leagues and leagues distant as it seemed, I pointed the glass and easily distinguished the royal, topgallant-sail and a snatch of the topsail of a ship heading directly for us. ‘I wonder if she’ll have any news?’ said I. ‘Beg your pardon, sir,’ exclaimed the man, ‘but could you tell me how long it’s reckoned in the cabin this here ramble’s a-going to last?’ ‘What was the nature of the voyage you signed for?’ ‘Why,’ he replied, ‘a yachting cruise to Table Bay and home.’ ‘It’ll not exceed that, I believe,’ I exclaimed.