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"I am well aware of that, Sir Gervaise," returned Parker, a gray-headed, meek old man, who had fought his way up from the forecastle to his present honourable station, and, who, though brave as a lion before the enemy, had a particular dread of all his commanders; "but we have been obliged to use more water aft than we could wish, on account of the tiers.
It gave the signal for a sudden tumult of shouts. The watch below ran up the forecastle head in a body, the cook dashed out of the galley. Everybody saw the poor fellows now. They were there!
Dreamily I watched the craft creep by upon the moving tide, noted the low freeboard, almost awash, the careful helmswoman, and the dog on the forecastle yapping at the distant shore and thought of Ruth Bellingham. What was there about this strange girl that had made so deep an impression on me? That was the question that I propounded to myself, and not for the first time.
The second encountered Broussard stepping off the bridge ladder, and hurled the fellow to the deck with one blow of a sledge-hammer fist. Scarcely pausing to see whether he was alive or not, the assailant ran on toward the forecastle. The whole affair was over in two minutes, the blue-jackets circling out like a fan, and pressing their enemy into a helpless mass against the rail.
I let the cook get into the rigging and joined the men, and asked if they had made a thorough search on board, though I knew they had and that it could not take long, for he wasn't on deck, and there was only the forecastle below. "That sea took him over, sir, as sure as you're born," said one of the men close beside me.
"I tell you what, mates," observed Pompey one evening, when he and two or three of his especial chums were seated together in the forecastle, "you may be sartain sure no good will come of having this stranger aboard. Why de captain make him mate is more than I can tell.
I was interrupted by the crashing report of Number 1, which, with the others, had already been most carefully trained upon the schooner; and as the smoke blew away we saw the vessel's port bulwark, all about the cathead, thickly dotted with white marks where the shot had struck, while the forecastle, which had been crowded with men a moment before, was now clear; not so much as a single head showed above the rail.
It is hard to meet a man whose opinion as a reader is worth leaving who does not speak of your works in such terms as he might hesitate to employ, with all his patriotism, toward many renowned English writers. Dana is, indeed, great. There is nothing in literature more remarkable than the impression produced by Dana's portraiture of the homely inner life of a little brig's forecastle.
I am an officer; but, how I wish I could fish a bit of old-fashioned beef in the forecastle, as I used to when I was before the mast. There's the fruits of promotion now; there's the vanity of glory: there's the insanity of life!
No sooner, however, did he make his appearance than he was hustled peremptorily off by the cook upon another errand; and when he returned, a quarter of an hour later, the forecastle was all ablaze, and the smoke just beginning to curl up through the scuttle. Then indeed he shouted "Fire!" with all his might, and at the terrible cry all hands rushed forward, to find the alarm only too true.
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