Page:Remarkable family adventure of Saunders Watson (1).pdf/19

Rh particular dislike at one sailor abroad, an elderly man, called Bill Jones, or some such name. He seldom spoke to this man without threats and abuse, which the old man, with the licence which sailors take in merchant vessels, was very apt to return. On one occasion Bill Jones appeared slow in getting on the yard to hand a sail. The captain, according to custom, abused the seaman as a lubberly rascal, who got fat by leaving his duty to other people. The man made a saucy answer, almost amounting to mutiny, on which, in a towering passion, the captain ran down to his cabin, and returned with a blunderbuss loaded with slugs, with which he took deliberate aim at the supposed mutineer, fired, and mortally wounded him. The man was handed down from the yard, and stretched on the deck, evidently dying. He fixed his eyes on the captain, and said, ‘Sir, you have done for me, but I will never leave you.’ The capttain, in return, swore at him for a fat lubber, and said, he would have him thrown in the slave kettle when they made food for the negroes, and see how much fat he had got; the man died; his body was actually thrown into the slave kettle, and—the narrator observed, with a ‘naivete’ which confirmed the extent of his own belief in the truth of what he told—there was not much fat about