. Oh, oh! but it's as good
as a bottle of rum to me. With all his dollars, and his bills, and his
airs, I never had a brother seized up at the gangway. And the captain
and the officers once made such a fuss about him! Damn his smooth
face!--I've a great mind to wake him, and hit him a wipe across the
chaps. He knocked me down with the davit-block, for twitting him about
that girl of his, that was drowned swimming after him. I'll have
satisfaction for that. The captain ordered me to leave the ship for
being knocked down. Well--we shall see who'll be ordered to leave the
ship now. I never caused a girl's death by desarting her. Upon my
soul, I've a great mind to rouse him, and hit him a slap of the chaps.
I hate smooth faces."

"Well," said Staines, "you may depend upon it Rattlin _is_ asleep, or he
would have wopped you, Pigtop, for your compliments."

"He! I should very much like to see it--the spooney."

"If Mr Rattlin is caulking," said our _valet-de-chambre_, "there can't
be no harm done whatsomever. But they do say, in the sick-bay, as how
Mr Rattlin isn't himself, but that Joshua Daunton is he, and that he is
nobody at all whatsomever; though Gibbons says, and he's a cute one,
that if Mr Rattlin is not Mr Rattlin, seeing as how Joshua Daunton is
Mr Rattlin, Mr Rattlin must be somebody else--and as a secret, he told
me, as like as not, he must be Joshua Daunton."

"Well, here's comfort again. If Mr Rattlin--_Mr_ indeed!--turns out
to be a swindler, as I'm sure he will, it wouldn't be lawful, nor right,
nor proper in me to pay him the money I owe him," said the conscientious
Mr Pigtop. "Damn his smooth face!--I should like to have the spoiling
of it."

Here was important information for me to ruminate upon. I was
determined to remain still as long as I could gain any intelligence.
But the conversation--if conversation we must term the gibberish of my
associates--having taken another turn, I slowly lifted up my smooth
face, and, confronting Mr Pigtop's rough one, I said to him, very
coolly, "Mr Pigtop, I am going to do what you would very much like to
see--I am going to wop you."

"Wop me!--no, no, it's not come to that yet. I have heard something--
I've a character to support--I must not demean myself."

"There is my smooth face, right before you--I dare you to strike it--you
dare not! Then, thus, base rascal, I beat you to the earth!" And
Pigtop toppled down.

Now, all this was very wrong