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We "stowaways" had had so much dirty work to do in all weathers for the past fortnight, that we looked sailor-like enough, I dare say; and as it had honestly been our endeavour to learn all we could, and shirk nothing, and as the captain's paper spoke well of us, I think the mate got a very good bargain for we were green enough to take lower wages than the customary rate on the strength of a long string of special reasons which he made us swallow.
Four stowaways had been found aboard our ship before she left the Clyde; but these two had alone escaped the ignominy of being put ashore. Alick, my acquaintance of last night, was Scots by birth, and by trade a practical engineer; the other was from Devonshire, and had been to sea before the mast.
A second man dragged himself thither. A third found voice to supplicate. The witch-fires still smoked and stewed in the pots and Blackbeard had proved that he was the toughest demon of them all. The two stowaways watched this demented exploit in sheer wonderment.
By Ex-Fire-Chief Warden. 534 The Boy Slave; or, A Young New Yorker in Central America. By Howard Austin. 535 Dunning & Co.; the Boy Brokers. 536 Daniel Boone's Best Shot; or, The Perils of the Kentucky Pioneers. By An Old Scout. 537 Ollie, the Office Boy; or, The Struggles of a Poor Waif. By Allyn Draper. 538 The Two Boy Stowaways; or, A Strange Voyage on a Doomed Ship. By Capt. Thos. H. Wilson.
These land stowaways play a great part over here in America, and I should have liked dearly to become acquainted with them. At Elko an odd circumstance befell me. I was coming out from supper, when I was stopped by a small, stout, ruddy man, followed by two others taller and ruddier than himself. "Ex-cuse me, sir," he said, "but do you happen to be going on?"
The number of volunteers asked for was a thousand, but at least two thousand applied for permission to go with the expedition, and ultimately some fourteen or fifteen hundred did actually go, one hundred stowaways being included in the number.
"Oh!" ejaculated Mr Mackay with deep meaning, swinging round on his heel, all alert in an instant; and taking hold of a short bar of iron pointed at the end, lying near, which Tim Rooney told me afterwards was what is called a "marling-spike," he proceeded to rap with it vigorously against the side of the companion hatchway, shouting out at the same time so that he could be heard all over the ship: "Tumble up, all you idlers and stowaways and everybody!
I have waited for the kitchen kettle to boil when Fred and I wanted to make "hot grog" with raspberry-vinegar and nutmeg at his father's house; I have waited for a bonfire to burn up, when we wanted to roast potatoes; I have waited for it to leave off raining when my mother would not let us go out for fear of catching colds; but I never knew time pass so slowly as when Fred and I were stowaways on board the steam-ship Atalanta.
There were rumours of German warships waiting to catch us in mid-ocean. Somewhere towards midnight the would-be stowaways gave up their attempt to force a passage; they squatted with their backs against the sheds along the quayside, singing patriotic songs to the accompaniment of mouth-organs, confidently asserting that they were sons of the bull-dog breed and never, never would be slaves.
"What's this?" demanded the skipper, stepping forward. "Here's a couple of stowaways. I know nothing about 'em. It's your risk if you choose to take 'em off." "If she've a message for Miss Sally " answered the old steersman after a pause. "It's life an' death!" pleaded Tilda.
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