Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 1).djvu/490

 "What a blazing fool a fellow makes of hisself when he goes to sea!" exclaimed a man with red hair and a broken nose. "I might ha' been a market-gard'ner had I stayed ashore. Think o' that! What did I run away from home for? For the likes of this for a parlour," said he, waving his hand round the forecastle, "and for the likes of yon," pointing to his hammock, "for a bed, and the likes of that muck," he added, pointing to the pork, "for a meal. But no growling's allowed. Ho no! Tell 'em that pickled dog ain't pork, and that wermin ain't ship's bread, and you're taken afore the magistrate and committed, and locked up, and left to rot whilst the blooming Dutchmen are getting all the jobs, because pickled dog to them is pork, and wermin a relish." He struck his fist heavily upon the chest on which he sat, and fastened his eyes upon his huge knuckles whilst he turned them about, as though he were inspecting a sample of coal.

"No use keeping all on growling," exclaimed a quiet-looking seaman, addressing the others over his folded arms. "What's to be the horder of the day?"

"A bust-up," answered the strong man, who bore the nickname of Black Sam. "Here we are, sixteen days out, two hands overboard, and not enough men by six able seamen to work the ship, wessel making water, and requiring to be pumped every four hours, meat fit to make a wulture ill, ship's bread old and wormy, and the rest of us men's stores shop-sweepings. Now this being so, I'm agoing to knock off work for one."

"And me for another" "And me for another," went, in a growl, from mouth to mouth.

"There's the mate and there's the carpenter," continued Black Sam. "If the capt'n can work the ship with them two, well and good. But Peter he shan't have. Rather than that cuss of a Dutchman should be agin us, and on the capt'n's side, I'd—" He projected his arm, and seemed with his powerful hairy hand to strangle something in the air.

At this point the square of hatchway was again darkened, and the salt, husky voice of the carpenter called down: "Be—low there. Hain't the starboard watch got their dinner yet? Tumble up! Tumble up! The wind's drawed ahead, and the yards want trimming."

"Tumble up!" exclaimed Black Sam. "Don't you be holding your nose too long over the hatch, or it'll be you as'll be tumbling down. Can't ye smell it? Oh, it's nothen but us men's dinner. There's plenty left if ye've a mind for a bite."

"Who's that a-jawing?" exclaimed Mr. Chips, who combined the duty of second-mate with that of ship's carpenter. "Tumble up, I tell you. The wind's drawed ahead."

"Catch it and smell it for yourself," shouted a seaman, plunging his hand into the mess-kid and hurling a lump of pork through the hatch. The sailors heard the hurried steps of Mr. Chips as he went aft.

"He'll be telling the old man," said Black Sam; "let's go on deck and have it out, lads. I'll do the talking part, with your good leave. We don't want no language. Civility's a trump card in these here traverses. We all knows what we mean to get, and I'll say it for ye."

He led the way, his shipmates followed; they gained the forecastle and stood in a group gazing at the after part of the ship.

The vessel was the Rose, from Liverpool to an East African port. She was an old-fashioned, composite ship, but her lines were those of a yacht's, and there were few vessels then afloat which could look at her on a bowline. Her yards were immensely square, and she carried swinging booms and main-skysail-mast, and her burthen was between six and seven hundred tons. Such a ship as this demanded eighteen of a crew at least, not to mention master, mates, and "idlers." Instead of eighteen the Rose had sailed with ten men in the forecastle, and a cook in the galley, and the others were a carpenter, who acted as second-mate, an Only Mate, and the captain. Of the slender crew, two had been swept overboard in a gale of wind. They were foreigners, and the English Jacks did not lament their shipmates' end, but on the contrary grinned fiendishly when it was discovered that the foreigners were gone, and they hideously wished that all Dutchmen who signed articles for the red ensign of England would go and fall overboard as those two foreigners had, and as promptly, too, so that nobody concerned might be kept waiting.

During the gale in which the two Dutchmen had perished, the ship had been so strained as to oblige the hands to serve the pumps every four hours. Undermanned, leaky, the provisions rotten! There must be a limit to patience and endurance, even though the sufferer be a sailor. The seven seamen lumped together on the forecastle of