"And the flat-nosed Malayan in the Eastern Seas." "Hah!" "And that Chinese, yellow, moon-faced woman." "Hah!" "And the black girl on the Guinea Coast." "Hah!" "And that Portingallo wench, and the Spanish lass with the dark eyes, and that great Greek, and a score beside." "Hah! Yes, skipper," said Wat calmly, "I've got an ugly shell, but the core inside is very soft." "Soft? Yes." "But you're going back a many years, skipper." "I need," cried Gil angrily. "A man of your age, too! Why, Wat, you're sixty, if you are a day!" "Sixty-four," growled Wat quietly, as he took out his flint and steel and screwed up his grim weather-beaten face. "Then it's a disgrace to you!" "Disgrace? What's being sixty-four got to do with it?" "Why you're an old man, sir!" "Old man? Not I, captain. I'm as young as ever I was, and as fond of a pretty girl. I'm not old; and, if I was, I get fonder of 'em every year I live." "It is disgraceful, sir!" cried Gil, angrily. "You ought to be thinking of your coffin instead of pretty girls." That touched Wat home, and he sprang to his feet with the activity of a boy. "No, I oughtn't, skipper," he cried, excitedly. "And, look here, don't you say that there terrifying word to me again--I hate it. When it's all over, if you don't have me dropped overboard, just as I am, at sea, or even here at home in the little river, I'll come back and haunt you. Coffin, indeed! Talk about such trade as that! Just as if I hadn't sailed round the world like a man." He reseated himself, and began once more to use his flint and steel, but this time viciously. "Once for all then, Wat, I will not have this sort of thing here. A man of your years hanging about after that great ugly dairy wench." "Who did?" cried Wat sharply. "Nay, captain, never." "Have I been mistaken, then?" cried Gil, eagerly. "Stop, though--you don't mean to say that you have been casting your ancient eyes on Janet?" "Why not?" cried Wat, leaping up once more. "She's as pretty a creature as ever I set my ancient eyes, as you call 'em, on." "Why, man, she's eighteen, and you are sixty-four." "All the better," cried Wat. "Janet it is, and I'm going to wed her." "Does she know it?" "Not quite, captain, not yet. Look ye here, skipper, my poor old mother had a plum grow on a tree by the cottage wall, and when I was a boy I meant to have that plum. Did I go and pick it right off and eat it there and then? Nay, I set my eyes on that plum while it was young and green, and saw it grow day by day rounder and redder, and covered with soft down and riper purple, and more rich and plump, and at last, when I picked that plum, I had a hundred times more 'joyment than if I'd plucked it when I saw it first. That's what I'm doing with little Janet, and that's what Master Peasegood calls a parabole." Gil felt that he might just as well argue with a rock as with his rugged old follower, so he changed the subject.