Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/813

1858.] fellow by the name of Eaton,—just the strangest old scamp you ever dreamed of. I suppose by rights he ought to have been in the hospital; he certainly was the nearest to crazy and not be it. He used to keep a long pole by him on deck,—a pole with a sharp spike in one end,—and any man who'd get near enough to him to let him have a chance would feel that spike. I've known him to keep the cook up till midnight frying doughnuts; then he'd call all hands aft and range 'em on the quarter-deck, and go round with his hat off and a plate of doughnuts in his hand, saying, as polite as you please, 'Here, my man, won't you take a doughnut?—they won't hurt you; nice and light; had them fried a purpose for you.' And then he'd get a bottle of wine or Curaçoa cordial, and go round with a glass to each man, and make him take a drink. You'd see the poor fellows all of a shake, not knowing how to take it,—afraid to refuse, and afraid still more, if they didn't, that the old man would play 'em some confounded trick. In the midst of it all, he'd seem as if he'd woke up out of a dream, and he'd sing out, in a way that made them fellows scatter, 'What the are all you men doing here at this time of night? Go forrard, every man jack of you! Go forrard, I tell you!' and it was 'Devil take the hindmost!'

"Well,—the old man was always on the look-out to catch the watch sleeping. He never seemed to sleep much himself;—I've heard that's a sign of craziness;—and the more he tried, the more sure we were to try it every chance we had. So sure as the old man caught you at it, he'd give you a bucketful of water, slap over you, and then follow it up with the bucket at your head. Fletcher, the second mate, and I, got so we could tell the moment he put foot on the companion-way, and, no matter how sound we were, we'd be on our feet before he could get on deck. But Fletcher got tired of his vagaries, and left us at Pernambuco, to ship aboard a homeward-bound whaler, and in his place we got a fellow named Tubbs, a regular duff-head,—couldn't keep his eyes open in the daytime, hardly.

"Well,—we were about two days out of Pernambuco, and Tubbs had the middle watch, of a clear starlight night, with a steady breeze, and everything going quietly, and nothing in sight. So, in about ten minutes after the watch got on deck, every mother's son of them was hard and fast. The wind was a-beam, and the old schooner could steer herself; so, even the man at the helm was sitting down on a hencoop, with one arm round the tiller, and snoring like a porpoise. I heard the old man rouse out of his bunk and creep on deck, and, guessing fun was coming, I turned out and slipped up after him. The first thing I saw was old Eaton at work at the tiller. He got it unshipped and braced up with a pair of oars and a hencoop, without waking the man at the helm,—how, I couldn't tell,—but he was just like a cat; and then he blew the binnacle-light out; and then he started forrard, with his trumpet in his hand. He caught sight of me, standing halfway up the companion-way, and shook his fist at me to keep quiet and not to spoil sport. He slipped forward and out on to the bowsprit, clear out to the end of the flying-jib-boom, and stowed himself where he couldn't be well seen to leeward of the sail.Then he sung out with all his might through the trumpet, '''Schooner ahoy, there! Port your hellum!—port'' I say,—you're right aboard of us!'—And then he'd drop the trumpet, and sing out as if in the other craft to his own crew, and then again to us. Of course, every man was on his feet in a second, thinking we were all but afoul of another vessel. The man who was steering was trying, with all his might, to put his helm a-port,—and when he found what was to pay there, to ship the tiller. This wasn't so easy; for the old man had passed the slack of the main-sheet through the head of the rudder, and belayed it on one of the boom-cleats, out of reach,—and, what with just waking up, and half a dozen