Page:The Wreck of a World - Grove - 1890.djvu/108

92 credit of fighting the ship and saving the squadron! The skipper's a landsman, more's the pity, but there's many a seaman I've known, and many an officer too, that wouldn't have carried her through the enemy's lines so straight and bold, and I'm proud to be one of his crew, I am. Git down to your berth, ye vain little jackdaw, and tuck your fool's head safe under the bed-clothes; for if I see ye again flaunting your peacock's feathers up and down the main-deck, I'll just bid half-a-dozen of the roustabouts give ye a good coat of tar and tie ye up to the cross-trees for a cock-shy, sure as my name's James Barker. Git."

Panic terror overcame the hero, and taking the boatswain's threat au pied de la lettre, he actually took to his berth and remained there for two days. When at last he crept up the hatches it was with the limp air of the anathematized Jackdaw of Rheims, the conceit all out of him—for the time being.

No adventures befell us on our voyage down the Gulf of Mexico, and nothing more serious than repeated stranding in the Darien Canal, which having now been for some months disused was already beginning to silt up. These little difficulties seemed to me a