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WHAT're you about! Snatch it! SNATCH it! There! there! Aft again! aft again! don't you hear me. Dash it to dash! are you going to SLEEP over it! 'VAST heaving. 'Vast heaving, I tell you! Going to heave it clear astern? WHERE're you going with that barrel! FOR'ARD with it 'fore I make you swallow it, you dash-dash-dash-DASHED split between a tired mud-turtle and a crippled hearse-horse!
Sixty men for'ard that was men, an' eight boys, an' drive! drive! drive! Three hundred an' seventy-four miles for a day's run under t'gallantsails, an' in the squalls eighteen knots o' line not enough to time her. Eighty-nine days never beat, an' tied once by the old Andrew Jackson nine years afterwards. Them was the days!" "When did the Andrew Jackson tie her?"
"Those lubbers for'ard," he said when Hartog, he, and I sat together one evening in the cabin, "will make trouble if they can. They are a pig-headed lot, and a dozen apiece at the gratings would do them no harm. But while they outnumber us, as they do, three to one, we must avoid a quarrel.
For four days and nights the little Indiana had leapt and spun along, before a steady southerly gale, rolling like a drunken thing a-down the for'ard slopes of mountain seas, and struggling gamely up again with flattened canvas from out the windless trough; a bright, hot sun had shone upon her swashing decks from its slow rosy dawn to its quick setting of fiery crimson and blazing gold; and at night a big white moon lit up an opal sky, and silvered the hissing froth and smoky spume that curled in foaming ridges from beneath her clean-cut bows.
"If they will rig me a studding-sail, or an old fore-course for'ard, I will do the rest or try to do it," said I. "Will you?" exclaimed Mendouca, in surprise. "Then I am sure you may, and I heartily wish you joy of the job." "Very well, then, I will set about it the first thing after breakfast," said I. And I did.
"Three pore females," said the precise mate; "the missis has got all the letters tied up with blue ribbon. Very far gone they was, too, poor creeters." "George," said the skipper in a broken voice, "I'm a ruined man. I'll never hear the end o' this. I guess I'll go an' sleep for'ard this voyage, and lie low.
"'Docks, says he, ''tis a clever thought. "'Twas Skipper Jim's trick at the wheel, an' I loafed aft t' have a word with un keepin' well t' win'ward all the time; for he'd just come up from the forecastle. "'Skipper Jim, says I, 'we're found out. "'What's found out? says he. "'The case o' smallpox for'ard, says I. 'What you goin' t' do about it? "'Do! says he. 'What'll I do?
The Asiatic clique has decided that murder was attempted and that all that saved the mate was his hard skull. Last evening, in the second dog-watch, I got another proof that Captain West is not so oblivious of what goes on aboard the Elsinore as he seems. I had gone for'ard along the bridge to the mizzen-mast, in the shadow of which I was leaning.
I rashly lent a hand when they started to work the cask for'ard, between seas and taking advantage of the rolls and pitches, to the shelter under the forecastle-head. As a result, even through my mittens, I was cut by the sharp edges of broken shell. "It's liquor of some sort," said the mate, "but we won't risk broaching it till morning." "But where did it come from?" I asked.
Then followed some leisurely movements on deck, accompanied by the throwing down of a rope or two, the creaking of blocks and parralls, a few quiet ejaculations as of men pulling and hauling, the clink of windlass pawls, the loud slatting of loose canvas in the strong land-breeze that was blowing; and finally as the latter sounds ceased I felt the felucca heel strongly over to port, and heard the increasing gurgle and wash of water along the bends and under the counter of the little craft, accompanied by an occasional call from for'ard to the helmsman, by which I knew that we were under way, and standing down the harbour toward Port Royal.
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