"I was there to save my skipper from being pooked," growled Wat, slowly and between puffs of his pipe. "It was as if I had been sent on purpose." "It's a lie," cried Gil, angrily. "Wat, you are an old trickster and a cheat. How dare you try to deceive me?" "There," said Wat, quietly addressing a beech pollard before him; "that's gratitude for watching over and saving him from being pooked." "Of course you saved me from danger, just as any brave man would try to save another, and more especially one of a crew, his skipper. There is no merit attached to that. Now look here, Wat, confess, for I am sure I know." "I don't know about no confessing," growled Wat; "you're a skipper, not a priest. S'pose I asked you what you were doing there? If the captain sets such an example, what can you 'spect of the crew?" Gil twisted his moustache angrily, and then turned sharply on his follower. "You were not watching me?" "I arn't going to tell no lies. No." "You as good as say, then, that you were on the same errand as I?" "I arn't going to sail round no headlands when there's a port right in front. I arn't ashamed. Yes, I were." "Look here, Wat Kilby," said Gil, after taking a step or two up and down in front of the old fellow, who calmly leaned back and gazed straight before him--"look here, Wat Kilby, you have been like a second father to me." "Hah!" And then a puff of smoke. "And I would not willingly hurt your feelings." "Hah!" "But I hold in great respect the people who dwell in yon house, and I will not have them in anywise annoyed." "Then I wouldn't go coming the Spanish Don, under their windows o' nights," growled Wat. "Silence, sir," cried Gil. As he spoke, the young man's face flushed with shame and mortification at being twitted with his amorous passages, but there was a look of command and an imperious tone in his voice that told of one accustomed to be obeyed, and the great lank muscular man, tanned and hardened by a life of exposure, shuffled uneasily in his seat and let his little pipe go out. "If it had been another man, Wat," continued Gil, "I should have given him a week in irons for daring to go near the place." "What! after his skipper set an example?" growled Wat. "Silence, sir," roared Gil, catching the old fellow by the shoulder. "Bah!" he continued, calming down, "Why do you anger me, Wat?" and he loosed his hold. "Oh, haul away, young 'un," growled Wat, with a grim smile, "you don't hurt me. I like to see what a sturdy young lion you've grown. That's your father, every inch of him, as did that. Hah! he was a one." "Let him rest, Wat," cried Gil impatiently. "My father would never have looked over an act of folly or disobedience. Neither will I." "You never ordered me not to go," growled Wat. "Then I do now, sir! Look here. What does it mean? Are you not ashamed of yourself, carrying on these gallantries? There was that Carib woman out at Essequibo." "Hah!" with a smokeless exhalation.