But Hamilton bluntly confessed to loathing
anything that was at all useful, and so he perforce had to be left to
pick his own position under the awnings, there to doze, and smoke
cigarettes, and scribble on paper as the moods so seized him.
It was off one of the ports in the peninsula of Yucatan, toward the Bay
of Campeachy, that Cranze chose to fall overboard. The name of the place
was announced by some one when they brought up, and Cranze asked where
it was. Kettle marked it off with a leg of the dividers on the chart.
"Yucatan," said Cranze, "that's the ruined cities shop, isn't it?"--He
shaded his unsteady eyes, and looked out at a clump of squalid huts just
showing on the beach beyond some three miles of tumbling surf. "Gum!
here's a ruined city all hot and waiting. Home of the ancient Aztecs,
and colony of the Atlanteans, and all that. Skipper, I shall go ashore,
and enlarge my mind."
"You can go if you like," said Kettle, "but remember, I steam away from
here as soon as ever I get the cargo out of her, and I wait for no man.
And mind not to get us upset in the surf going there. The water round
here swarms with sharks, and I shouldn't like any of them to get
indigestion.
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