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It was the boatswain of the Skyscraper, one of the least objectionable of the crew. "But what are you doing here? you shipped for the voyage," he said sharply. "Yes, but I got away at Key West, when I knew what was coming. I wasn't on her when she was abandoned." "Abandoned!" repeated the consul. "What the d -l! Do you mean to say she was wrecked?" "Well, yes you know what I mean, sir.
The first thing done was to set about the restoration of the boatswain, and this task was undertaken by Chichester, the doctor, while Dyer, assisted by two of the men who had come aft with the lanterns, proceeded to free the senseless body from the curious serpent-like thing that still enwrapped it.
"What! A place full of foul air?" said the boatswain, greatly to Don's relief. "Absurd! If Ramsden could not live in there, how could the escaped men? Here, let's get him down." "Ay, ay, sir. But I say, mate, where's your fighting tools? What yer done with them?"
A bullet through the chest don't lengthen a man's days, that's certain; but this I know, that he'll not die if he can help it, now that he's got the captain's jacket on." "Yes; he always aspired to be a gentleman, which was absurd enough in a boatswain." "Not at all absurd, Peter, but very absurd of you to talk without thinking.
The third night after the action, being curious to understand how affairs stood, I took the supercargo and twenty stout fellows with me, and landed about two hours before midnight, at the same place where those Indians stood the night before, and there we divided our men into two bodies, the boatswain commanding one, and I another.
"I once knocked about in a vessel as were a-tryin' to git round this blissid place for a month av Sundays, an' couldn't." "And what did you do, measter?" asked Joe Fergusson, who had a great respect for the boatswain and was eyeing him open-mouthed. "What did you do when you couldn't sail round it?"
If Byron could nurse his dying dog, Boatswain, and erect a monument to his memory, and not lose, but gain, our respect by so doing, we surely might let pass, unquestioned, the Queen's grief for a faithful human creature for thirty-four years devoted to her ever at her call looking up to her, yet watching over her; a friend, whose humble good sense and canny bits of counsel must often, in the simpler, yet not simple, affairs of her complex life, be sorely missed.
The captain himself, while this was being done, saw to the ship's log and other papers, taking also out of the cabin his best chronometer and a chart or two, as well as a sextant and some mathematical instruments. These preparations for departure, though, were abruptly cut short by a warning cry from Bill Summers, the boatswain.
"Yes," says he, "I think it very practicable." We were then anchored off the city of Bassorah, and one night William and I went ashore, and sent a note to the boatswain telling him we were betrayed and bidding him make off with the ship.
I therefore bade him lay for the boatswain and the carpenter as well; for I had sense enough to recognise the importance of keeping my finger upon the pulse of the crew, so to speak, and I knew that this could best be done by means of little confidential chats with the boatswain and Chips, who were the men's representatives.
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