don't know where we are. We haven't even a change of clothes. Of course
we know we're at your mercy, but do behave like an honest man. You shall
be paid or not, just as you please, for putting us on shore, but we shall
be eternally grateful to you. Of course you mean kindly to us; we see
that--'

'I thank the Lord for it!' he interposed.

'Only you really are under a delusion. It 's extraordinary. You can't
be quite in your right senses about us; you must be--I don't mean to
speak disrespectfully-what we call on shore, cracked about us. . . .

'Doddered, don't they say in one of the shires?' he remarked.

Half-encouraged, and in the belief that I might be getting eloquent, I
appealed to his manliness. Why should he take advantage of a couple of
boys? I struck the key of his possible fatherly feelings: What misery
were not our friends suffering now. ('Ay, a bucketful now saves an ocean
in time to come!' he flung in his word.) I bade him, with more pathetic
dignity reflect on the dreadful hiatus in our studies.

'Is that Latin or Greek?' he asked.

I would not reply to the cold-blooded question. He said the New
Testament was written in Greek, he knew, and happy were those who could
read it in the original.

'Well, and how can we be learning to read it on board ship?' said Temple,
an observation that exasperated me because it seemed more to the point
than my lengthy speech, and betrayed that he thought so; however, I took