“Thet’s nothin’. Lets the shore blood outer you. Dad did it for yer health. Say, though, I can’t have dealin’s with a man that thinks me or dad or anyone on the We’re Here ’s a thief. We ain’t any common wharf-end crowd by any manner o’ means. We’re fishermen, an’ we’ve shipped together for six years an’ more. Don’t you make any mistake on that ! I told ye dad don’t let me swear. He calls ’em vain oaths, and pounds me; but ef I could say what you said ’baout your pap an’ his fixin’s, I’d say that ’baout your dollars. I dunno what was in your pockets when I dried your kit, fer I didn’t look to see; but I’d say, using the very same words ez you used jest now, neither me nor dad—an’ we was the only two that teched you after you was brought aboard—knows anythin’ ’baout the money. Thet’s my say. Naow?”
The bloodletting had certainly cleared Harvey’s brain, and maybe the loneliness of the sea had something to do with it. “That’s all right,” he said. Then he looked down confusedly. “Seems to me that for a fellow just saved from drowning I haven’t been over and above grateful, Dan.”
“Well, you was shook up and silly,” said Dan. “Anyway, there was only dad an’ me aboard to see it. The cook he don’t count.”
“I might have thought about losing the bills that way,” Harvey said, half to himself, “instead of calling everybody in sight a thief. Where’s your father?”
“In the cabin. What d’ you want o’ him again?”
“You’ll see,” said Harvey, and he stepped, rather groggily, for his head was still singing, to the cabin steps where the little ship’s clock hung in plain sight of the wheel. Troop, in the chocolate and yellow painted cabin, was busy with a notebook and an enormous black pencil which he sucked hard from time to time.
“I haven’t acted quite right,” said Harvey, surprised at his own meekness.