So down he went to the cabin, and up he came again to find Mr. Job with his best coat-tails spread, seated on the carriage of the Pride’s stern-chaser.

“Oh, Lord!” he couldn’t help groaning.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, Mr. Job, nothing.”  The fact was, Jacka had smeared a dollop of honey on that very gun-carriage to keep the wasps off him while he worked.  The sweet-standings, you see, always drew a swarm of wasps on feast-days, and the old man never could abide them since his accident with the bee-skip.

Mr. Job sat there with his mouth screwed up, eyeing the whole length of the lugger.

“I’d like to know why you were hammering out that tinplate?” said he.  “I can see with my own eyes you’ve been knocking dents in the deck; but I s’pose that wasn’t your only object.”

“I reckoned to tack it over this here hole in the bulwarks where the tide swung her up against the quay-end.”  Captain Jacka showed him the place.

“I’d have let you have a fresh plank if you’d only reported the damage in time.”

“Oh,” said Jacka, “a scrap of tin will answer just as well—­every bit.”

“I can’t think, Captain Tackabird, how it comes that you’ve no more regard for appearances.  Just look at the Unity, for instance, and how young Hewitt keeps her.”

“Born different, I suppose.”

“Ay, and if you don’t look out you’ll end different.  Patching a boat with tin!” Mr. Job let out a rasping kind of laugh.  “But that’s Polperro, all over.  Do you know what they tell about you, down to St. Ann’s?”—­Mr. Job came from St. Ann’s—­“They say, down there, that every man-child in Polperro is born with a patch in the seat of his—­”

Mr. Job stood up and cast a hand behind him, to explain. . . .

“I put it there to keep off the wopses,” said Captain Jacka.

“But what did he say?” asked Mary Polly, when her husband brought home the tale.

“First he said, ‘I’ll make you pay for this.’  Well, that was fair enough, for I ought to have warned him; but when I asked the price, and where the stuff could be matched—­for ’twas his best suit, you understand—­all of a sudden he stamps his foot and lets fly with the most horrible oaths.  It fairly creamed my flesh to hear him.  He’s a man of wrath, my love, and the end of him will be worse than the beginning.”

“I daresay; but he’ll give you the sack before that happens.”

The two poor old souls looked at one another; for Job had control of all the privateering companies in Polperro, and influence enough to starve a man out of the place.

“Lev us take counsel of the Lord,” said the old boy, as she knew he would.  So down on their knees they went, and prayed together.  Jacka even put up a petition for Mr. Job, but Mary Polly couldn’t say “Amen” to that.

The next morning Captain Jacka went down to the Pride at the usual hour, but only to find his crew scrubbing decks and Mr. Job ready for him.  “There’s your marching orders,” says the enemy, handing him a paper; “and if you want a character at any time, just come to me, and I’ll give you a daisy.”