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I waited, however, holding on as a cat does to a bough when you shake it, till the ship rolled over the other way, and then up I sprang easily enough, and there I saw Dickey Snookes and Polly and My Lord all standing by the side of the captain of the top, and grinning from ear to ear, as if they had some very good joke in hand.
The pangs of hunger at dinner-time, however, drove most of us there. We had not got half through the meal before Dickey Snookes made his appearance with the announcement that the schooner's maintopmast had been carried away, and that we should be soon up to her.
As the day drew on, the wind increased. Dickey Snookes having been properly cobbed, we all hurried on deck. As we looked through our glasses, we saw that the schooner was staggering along under as much canvas as she could carry; while the frigate glided on with becoming dignity, we having decidedly the advantage in a strong wind. I asked Sommers what he thought about the matter.
I asked as he passed me, not looking happy, for the ship was tumbling about, the spray was flying over us, and the wind was howling terrifically in the rigging. It was altogether very different to what it had been on the previous evening. Still poor Snookes had to go up. The boatswain's whistle and the voices of the officers sounded loud above the gale, and so did the cries of the midshipmen.
He's a mate such a good-natured, kind fellow, and is very merry, though he can be very serious; and do you know, when he's in the berth, none of the others, big or little, swear and talk about things they oughtn't to. I like Sommers, and so even does Snookes and My Lord; and he never lets anybody bully Polly when he's near.
They seemed to have forgotten all their sufferings and miseries, and would sing and dance and tell stories, and laugh all day long. I still continued to take Peter Pongo in hand, and began to teach him not only to speak but to read and write English. Snookes used to laugh at me at first, but when he saw the progress Peter made he wanted to teach him likewise.
"Good reason, Greggy," said Dickey Snookes aside to me, "she can't just see what she will do when she gets the wind!" Though I had never seen a slaver, the stranger came exactly up to my idea of what a slaver was like. We always at sea call a vessel, whose name and country we don't know, a stranger.
I have been mastheaded twice, and Dickey Snookes five times, since we came to sea; once for dressing up the sheep in some of the men's clothes just before the crew were mustered, and then letting them out on the deck; and another time for cutting poor Polly's hammock down by the head, and very nearly cracking his skull luckily it's rather thick.
His real name, though, is Algernon Godolphin Stafford, on which he rather prides himself. This was found out, so it was voted that he should be re-christened, and not be allowed under dreadful pains and penalties to assume his proper appellation in the berth; so no one thinks of calling him anything but Snookes.
It brought down the ship a peg or two in my estimation, and took the shine out of many of us, let me tell you. That fellow Snookes was continually offering me a lump of fat bacon, and at dinner he contrived to slip all the most greasy bits into my plate.
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