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Aiken, an able mariner, destined to command the schooner intended for the coasting trade, and ordered him, together with John Coles, sail-maker, Stephen Weekes, armorer, and two Sandwich Islanders, to proceed ahead and take soundings, while the ship should follow under easy sail.
There was a regular shout of laughter from all hands at the sail-maker thus turning the tables so completely on the Irishman, who got so angry at our merriment for the moment that he retired within his caboose, slamming the half-door too, and declaring that not a single mother's son of those present should have the taste of hot coffee again in the morning watch!
There were only three the jib, foresail, and mainsail; and, patched, shortened, and distorted, they were a ridiculously ill-fitting suit for so trim a craft as the Ghost. "But they'll work!" Maud cried jubilantly. "We'll make them work, and trust our lives to them!" Certainly, among my many new trades, I shone least as a sail-maker.
George Goff, the sail-maker, said he "was a fust-rate feller;" and Larry O'Hale, the cook, declared, "he was a trump intirely, an' ought to have been born an Irishman."
Every man had been ill except one, the sail-maker, who was upwards of seventy years of age; he, however, was among those who died on the passage to the Cape of Good Hope. After leaving Java, the Endeavour touched at Prince's Island, where she took in water and fresh provisions.
"The sail-maker was the tailor, then. How many fathoms of canvas in it, Purser's Steward?" "How much for this jacket?" reiterated the auctioneer, emphatically. "Jacket, do you call it!" cried a captain of the hold. "Why not call it a white-washed man-of-war schooner? Look at the port-holes, to let in the air of cold nights." "A reg'lar herring-net," chimed in Grummet.
At first I was so stunned that I appeared as a statue, with the letter in my hand, and in this condition I remained until roused by the first lieutenant, who had come to the office to desire me to pass the word for "letters for England," and to desire the sail-maker to make a bag. "Faithful why what's the matter? Are you ill, or ?" I could not reply, but I put the letter into his hand.
"Then let me look at you a little closer," cried the sail-maker, pulling Doolan towards him, and passing his hand over his nose. "What the blazes are ye afther, man?" asked Pat, not being able to make out what the other meant by handling him in that fashion. "Only seeing if you had my mark," said Sails, calmly; "and here it is, by all that's powerful!" "Your mark, Sails? What on airth d'ye mane?"
After this, as the hill was very steep on the land side towards the bottom whence we had to fetch water, we cut steps in the hill with axes and shovels; and our sail-maker made a hose or canvass pipe of ninety fathoms long, which carried the water from the top of the hill down to our water cask at its foot towards the sea.
Do you remember, when off the Cape, the sail-maker and several others being unable to do their duty, and being pronounced by the doctor to be in a state of liquor? Captain. Yes. P. Counsel. The jury will be able to draw their own inference as to that. Captain. P. Counsel. Thank you for that evidence.
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