But there was one chap aboard as the captain seemed quite to hate, and
used to put upon him shameful. He was a thin wiry fellow, as yellow as
a guinea, and looked as if he'd black blood in his veins; but he always
swore as he had not. He'd got a Dutch sort of name, Van Haigh, but
hailed somewhere out of one of the West Indy Islands, and had knocked
about almost everywhere. Curious-looking chap he was, looked as if he'd
always got his parlour window-blinds half pulled down, and he'd peep at
you sideways from underneath them in a queer catlike sort of way. He
was quite a swell fellow in his way, only dirty as dirty, and that
didn't do nothing towards setting off the big silver rings he had in his
ears, and was uncommon proud of. We mostly used to call him "Van" for
short; and against this chap the skipper always seemed to have a spite,
bullying him about more than all the rest put together, till you might
have thought his life would have been miserable--but not it; he always
showed his white teeth and grinned, pocketing all that the skipper and
the mate gave him, till them pockets of his must have been full and nigh
unto bursting. Once the captain knocked him down with a marlinespike,
but he never drew no knives, not even when the mate kicked him, and told
him to get up. He only grinned, but it was a queer sort of grin, and I
didn't like the look of it.
These sort of rows used generally to take place when the passengers had
gone down of a night, or before they came on deck of a morning. While
before the cabin lot, Captain Harness was quite the gentleman, and it
seemed to me that he had a sort of hankering after Miss Bell, like some
more of them, or else he wouldn't have been so wonderfully civil about
having Mr Bell's chair moved here and there, and wanting him to take
wine, and things that Mr Ward said he was better without.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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