Page:Rideout--Beached keels.djvu/193

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WILD JUSTICE
179

each other. Lee did most of the eating, and all the talking, which ran chiefly on his voyages and what a figure he had cut in the world,—strange disconnected yarns, jumping from port to port, from London to Valparaiso, Melbourne, and Hong Kong. Some were funny, some rudely picturesque, some obscene. Through them all Marden found himself wondering to think how easily he might once have gone on doing just as this other of the Sebright blood.

Finally, when the fish and bread and butter and coffee had all disappeared, and Marden was busy clearing away the things, the sailor took to the armchair again by the stove.

"It's a cold climate you 've got here," he grumbled, huddling in the chair. "Ongodly cold." But he was evidently in gross comfort, for he sat there gorged, staring in front of him, and from time to time made a sucking noise through his teeth that sounded in the room as loud as a man chirruping to a horse.

By lamplight he seemed once more like the ghost of the old captain, so that Marden,