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Unfortunately, the second-mate was an old sea-dog, who owed his present inferior condition to his being a great deal addicted to the practice in which his captain indulged only a little, and he had been sharing largely in the hospitality of the cabin that afternoon, it being his watch below.
She then kept away a little, to close nearer, evidently examining the force opposed to her. The Indiamen had formed the line of battle in close order, the private signal between English men-of-war and East India ships flying at their mast-heads. "Extremely strange, that she does not answer the private signal," said the colonel to the second-mate. "Not at all, if she don't know how."
Her husband had been in Altruria before, and he and Aristides were old acquaintances and met like brothers; some of the crew knew him, too, and the captain relaxed discipline so far as to let us shake hands with the second-mate as the men's representative.
This cry, coming from his first officer, startled even Captain Crutchely, who was recovering a little from the effect of his potations, though it was still treated with contempt by the second-mate, who had never forgiven one as young as Mark, for getting a berth that he fancied due to his own greater age and experience.
It was in a state of great excitement that Newton waited for her return, when the second-mate informed him that on his approach he discovered that she was a flush vessel, pierced for fourteen guns, painted black, and apparently well manned; that she evidently, to use a nautical term, was "gutting the neutral;" and that, as they had witnessed, on their boat coming within range, the vessel had fired a round of grape, which fortunately fell short of them.
"Shall I awake the men, sir?" asked Mr. Leach. "Not one of them. Every hour of sleep the people get will be a lower mast saved. These sticks that still remain are our foundation, and even one of them is of more account to us, just now, than a fleet of ships might be at another time. Take your arms and follow me; but first we will give a hint to the second-mate of what we are about."
"The second-mate as was drowned when the surf-boat capsized!" "What do you know about it?" Brown asked. "I know something, sir," said Watson, but Montgomery stopped him and turned to the others. "It seems the second mate tried to save the stuff." "Looks like that," Brown agreed and signed to the sailor. "Now tell us all you do know."
"If we had a few guns, and were a little stronger-handed," growled an old salt to the second-mate, as he hitched up his trousers and rolled over his quid, "I should think the hard one, aft, had been stripping for a fight; but as it is we have nothing to carry on the war with, unless we throw sea-biscuits into the enemy'!"
He and I have had a good talk on the way down. We got along fust-rate; hey, commodore? The commodore's agreed to ship second-mate along with me next v'yage I make, if I ever make one." Thankful held her "relation" he was Emily's half-brother and her own favorite next to Emily herself in that family at arm's length. "You blessed little little mite!" she exclaimed.
That there lad, said the Captain, 'arter working with the best, and standing by the faint-hearted, and never making no complaint nor sign of fear, and keeping up a spirit in all hands that made 'em honour him as if he'd been a admiral that lad, along with the second-mate and one seaman, was left, of all the beatin' hearts that went aboard that ship, the only living creeturs lashed to a fragment of the wreck, and driftin' on the stormy sea.
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