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Two or three sailors the anchor watch were forward, engaged in some service about the capstan, and a fellow was swabbing the deck amidship. I heard Broussard's voice at a distance, but could not locate him. However, no one paid the slightest attention to me, as I stood smoking, and gazing curiously around. Everything appeared peaceful enough.
A "messenger" was a huge rope, of I suppose eighteen to twenty-four inches circumference, used for lifting the anchor. At the after end of the ship it was passed three times round the capstan, where the men walking round merrily to the sound of the fife, under the eyes of the officer of the deck, were doing the work of weighing; at the forward end it moved round rollers to save friction.
"Now to work," cried the captain, wiping his sword, and laying it, with a brace of loaded pistols, on the capstan. "What are you staring at, you fools? have you lost your senses? Open the after-hatch, and bring them up, one at a time. Get the plank ready." The first who was led bound before the captain was the steward of the ship. He was deadly pale, and trembled very much.
The Chief Engineer's sleeping suit was of yellow striped with blue, and his speech was the speech of Aberdeen. They sluiced the deck under him, and he hopped on to the ornamental capstan, a black pipe between his teeth, though the hour was not seven of the morn.
So saying, Moses struck two fingers on the capstan after the manner of a tuning-fork, and, holding them gravely to his ear as if to get the right pitch, began in a really fine manly voice to chant the following ditty: Oh when de sun am shinin' bright, and eberyt'ing am fair, Clap on de steam an' go to work, an' take your proper share.
I reflected upon what had passed, and felt convinced that Swinburne was right in saying that it was better this had occurred than otherwise. I now knew the ground which I stood upon; and forewarned was being forearmed. We encounter a Dutch brig of war Captain Hawkins very contemplative near the capstan Hard knocks, and no thanks for it Who's afraid?
"Yes," said I. "Have the goodness, Mr Fidd, to muster all hands aft here; let them tail on to the hawser and rouse it smartly inboard; then man the capstan and lift the anchor." "Ay, ay, sir," was the reply, and the man turned away to see the order executed. At that moment Courtenay came aft.
His weather-beaten face, his sailor's hands, his sea-voice hoarse with singing at the capstan, the very foot that had once worn that buckle and trod so much along the swerving decks the whole human fact of him, as a creature like myself, with hair and blood and seeing eyes, haunted me in that sunny, solitary place, not like a spectre, but like some friend whom I had basely injured.
Then I went on deck, and found the skipper with two or three officers grouped near the capstan and intently eyeing some object to windward.
The coal was shipped for we had been coaling all day. The boats were hoisted, and the anchor weighed. Being a member of the drum and fife band on the 'Emerald, whose work was to play marches while the capstan was being manned, I must say that our march on this occasion was out of place. A gallop would have been suitable.
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