When all was ready for the meal the mate appeared, from I know not
where, and took his seat opposite the skipper, and I drew my stool
between them, while the man Jerry sat nearer the fire on an
upturned cask.
The mate, whose name was Peter Brown, was a red-faced little man
with a nose that had a decided list to the starboard, very untidy
in his dress, and given a bit to swearing, but a real good sort of
fellow, as I afterwards found, and a capital seaman. He had served
in English ships in the Baltic trade, but getting knocked about in
a storm rounding Cape Wrath, breaking his arm and his nose, he had
been put ashore at Kirkwall, where he had met with Captain Flett
and joined the Falcon, thirteen years before this time.
"And now, my lad," said Flett, blowing a hot potato that he held in
his horny hand, "what brings ye all the way to Kirkwall on a cold
day like this? Ye didna tell us that."
"Well, captain," I said, looking down at my platter and wondering
how I could eat its plentiful contents, hungry though I was, "I
just sauntered along to see if I could get some work. My mother's
sorely needin' help now, ye ken, since father was drowned, and I
maun be doing something."
"Ay, ye're right there, lad; ye're right there. But what kind o'
work were ye seekin'?"
"I carena what it be, if it's just work," I replied.
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