Then, if Johnson were the visitor, he would pick a snack out of the cupboard, and stand, braced against the table, eating it, and perhaps obliging me with a word or two of his hee-haw conversation: how it was "a son of a gun of a cold night on deck, Mr.
Dodd" (with a grin); how "it wasn't no night for panjammers, he could tell me": having transacted all which, he would throw himself down in his bunk and sleep his two hours with compunction.

But the captain neither ate nor slept.

"You there, Mr.Dodd ?" he would say, after the obligatory visit to the glass.

"Well, my son, we're one hundred and four miles" (or whatever it was) "off the island, and scudding for all we're worth.

We'll make it to-morrow about four, or not, as the case may be.
That's the news.