"Ah, the new apprentice Mr Mackay was telling me about just now--eh ?" "Yes, sir," said I for he glanced over towards me as he spoke.
"Well, I hope you'll get on well with your shipmates." He did not say any more, completing his sentence by draining his tea- cup; and my friend the boatswain, apparently taking this as a hint, shouted out in a tone that made my ears tingle: "Ahoy there, stoo-ard!" "Yase, yase, I coom," replied someone in a queer squeaky voice, that had a strong foreign accent, from somewhere in the darkness beyond the foot of the the companion way, where the gleam of the solitary saloon lamp did not quite penetrate; "I coom, sare, queek, queek." "Ye'd betther come sharp, sharp, or I'll know the rayson why," growled Tim Rooney, however, before he could say any more a little dark man with black crinkly hair like a negro's emerged into the light, looking by no means amiable at being disturbed by the boatswain's hail.
"What you want--hey ?" he asked angrily.

"I got my bizness to do in pantry, 'fore ze cap'in coom aboard." "What do I want, me joker ?" returned Tim, in no way put out by his rude address.

"I want somethin' to ate for me an' this young jintleman here.
D'ye hear that ?" "Zere's nuzzing left," surlily answered the man.

"You should coom down in ze propare time." "The dickens I should?
Confound y'r impudence, ye mangy Porteegee swab! Allow me to till ye, Misther Paydro Carvalho--an' be the powers it's a sin ag'in the blessed Saint Pater to name such an ugly thafe as ye afther him--that I'll pipe down to grub whin I loikes widout axin y'r laive or license.

Jist ye look sharp, d'ye hear, an' git us somethin' to ate at once!" To emphasise his words, the boatswain jumped up from his seat as he spoke; and the other, thinking he was going to make an attack on him, dodged to the opposite side of the table so as to have this as a sort of bulwark in between the irate Irishman and himself, vehemently protesting all the while that there was "nuzzing" he could put on the table.
"Nonsense, steward," interposed the second mate, who with Matthews seemed highly amused at the altercation, the two grinning between their bites of bread and butter.