United States or Malaysia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
All that could be done for the time being was to organize the afterguard to work buckets, and to keep the men steadily going on the choked hand-pumps, which practically amounted to an attempt to bale out the ship!
And each man said to himself, "I may be the next to get what the little squarehead got." Misery loves company, so these stiffs naturally drew close together. Their common hatred and fear of the afterguard fused them into a unit. By the time we were a month at sea, the stiffs, like the squareheads, were in a most dangerous temper, and ripe for any deviltry.
A little black fellow, whose sobriquet is Othello, manages the castanets, and there is a tolerable flute played by one of the afterguard.
"Well, this is a fast ship none faster," I told him, mollified by his flattery. "Say seventy days, at the outside, from 'Frisco to Hong Kong. Probably sixty days would be nearer to it." At that he burst out cursing, and consigned the ship and all her afterguard to the Evil One. "My God, another month of this hell!" he cried. "Will you stand it, Shreve?" "Sure. We'll all stand it. What else to do?"
If she ever sailed off Great Misery Island, the crew of a run-under Salem fishing smack would rise up to curse the schooner's company. And that curse would follow those who sailed aboard her either for'ard or in the afterguard for all time.
Raft was at the wheel and Captain Pound the master was pacing the deck with Mason the first officer, up and down, pausing now and then for a glance away to windward, now with an eye aloft at the steadfast canvas, talking all the time of subjects half a world away. It was a sociable ship as far as the afterguard was concerned.
Members of the afterguard who were not mathematically trained plunged into the very practical study of how to work out observations. Writing home on October 26, 1911, Scott remarks: "Cherry" has just come to me with a very anxious face to say that I must not count on his navigating powers.
Then to Peth: "If ye think ye'll be more comfortable for'ard, Peth, why, that's your lookout. We'll let it stand that way till we talk it over and " "Bad for discipline to have the mate for'ard with the crew," shouted Dinshaw. "Ye'll stay with the afterguard, Mr. Peth. I'm master here. That's all." "Who is skipper, anyhow?" demanded Peth. "I'm skipper," said Jarrow.
And there, too, live the men, the ship's hands, whom it is his duty to keep employed, fair weather or foul, for the ship's welfare. It is the chief mate, the only figure of the ship's afterguard, who comes bustling forward at the cry of "All hands on deck!" He is the satrap of that province in the autocratic realm of the ship, and more personally responsible for anything that may happen there.
Sea ice when pressed up into large hummocks gradually loses all its salt. It may be added that in contradistinction to the nicknames of Skipper conferred upon Evans, and Mate on Campbell, Scott himself was known among the afterguard as The Owner. Meares is the greatest attraction; he has a full voice which is musical but always very flat.
Word Of The Day