They twitched, as a dry cackle of laughter broke out.
"Kut Sing, ahoy!" shouted Heywood.

"On deck! Kneebone!" The shoes whipped inboard.

Outboard popped a ruddy little face, set in the green circle of a _topi_, and contorted with laughter.
"Listen to this, will ye!" cried the apparition, as though illustrating a point.

Leaning his white sleeves on the rail, cigar in one fist, Tauchnitz volume in the other, he roared down over the side a passage of prose, from which his visitors caught only the words "Ginger Dick" and "Peter Russet," before mirth strangled him.
"God bless a man," he cried, choking, "that can make a lonesome old beggar laugh, out here! Eh, what?
How he ever thinks up--But he's took to writing plays, they tell me.

Plays!" He scowled ferociously.