Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 1).djvu/491

 the Rose stood staring aft. The cook, a pale man, lounged in his galley door, half in and half out, and his face wore an expression of sour expectation. The carpenter, as I may call him, was talking to the captain, and the Only Mate was slowly rising through the companion hatch as the body of seamen stood staring.

The captain, whose name was Jones, was a tall, lean, gaunt man, his face of the colour of sulphur, his appearance decidedly Yankee, though he happened to belong to Limehouse. He wore square-toed boots, a cloak that might have been taken from the shoulders of a stage bandit, and a sugar-loafed hat. The hair on his face consisted. of a beard that fell from under his chin like a goat's, and his eyes were black, brilliant, and restless.

The Only Mate, whose name was Johnson, was about half the captain's height. The ocean had done its work with him, had withered up his face, dried the marrow out of his bones, put a turn in either leg, that his walk was like a pantomime clown's. Instead of being an Only Mate, he should have formed the eighth part of a mate. You would have thought that eight at least of such men as Mr. Johnson should go to the making of an Only Mate for the Rose, had you sent your glance from his dried and kinked figure to the body of men forward, more particularly to the giant Black Sam, who, with the rest, continued to gaze aft. The carpenter, or second mate, was a brown-faced man of about fifty, but brine had taken the place of blood in his veins, and he looked sixty, with his white locks and rounded back and long, hanging arms, whose fingers were curled in the manner of fish-hooks. At the wheel stood the Scandinavian seaman, Peter, the like of whom you may see any day blowing in a German band in the streets of London: veal-coloured, freckled, yellow-haired, a figure loosely put together, and as meaningless an expression of countenance as a dab's.

The captain was puffing at a long cigar that drooped between his lips. Presently he pulled his cigar from his mouth, and shouted: "We don't want all hands. The starboard watch can trim sail. Trim sail, the starboard watch!" and replacing his cigar, he fell to swiftly striding the quarter-deck to and fro.

The seven sailors marched aft, and came to a stand a little abaft the mainmast. Black Sam advanced himself by a step, and exclaimed:—"Capt'n Jones, us men don't