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Updated: June 29, 2025
"Heigho," said the boatswain, yawning. "I sha'n't have much to spend on Hollands when I get there. Them rubbers at bowls in London have pretty near cleaned my purse out." "Ah, come off," said the carpenter. "You can always get rid of a coil of rope to someone, on the sly, you boatswains can. A coil of rope comes to a few guilders. Eh, mynheer?"
The commander gave me boatswains and sailors to teach me the various details of my duty, and I soon learnt to give things their right names, to tie knots, and to climb about the rigging too, though I did not manage that, the first time, without being horribly frightened.
The boatswains used other means. Sometimes it was a sharp word or an angry oath, at others a crack of the whip in the air; too often the thong came down with a cruel cut on bare flesh, and there was a cry or an oath from the victim and a frantic tugging at the great oar.
The three nimble galleys formed into line: their boatswains' whips cracked as the slaves bent to their oars, and presently one of our own ships was gored and sunk, the men on her being killed in the water without hope of rescue. And then commenced a tight-locked melee that would have warmed the heart of the greatest warrior alive.
He has a full gallery of captains and lieutenants, each differing from the other; but his greatest successes in portrayal, those that take hold of the memory, are his warrant officers boatswains, gunners, and carpenters. The British navy did not give sailmakers this promotion.
Involuntarily my eyes sought the poop, and I gave a sigh of relief at the sight of the commanding figure in the midst of the whirling smoke. We shotted our guns with double-headed, manned our lee braces, and gathered headway. "Stand by to board!" The boatswains' whistles trilled through the ship, pikes were seized, and pistol and cutlass buckled on.
Boats, river-hands, and Indians could be hired at ridiculously low prices, and travelling and bartering paid; wages for Indians being about a shilling per day, and all found; the same for river-hands. Captains and boatswains to pilot the boat through the rapids up and down for sixty-four cents a day. To-day you have got to pay sixty-four to eighty cents per day for Indians and river-hands.
On the poop stood Sakr-el-Bahr with Othmani, Ali, Jasper-Reis, and some other officers. Up and down the gangway paced Larocque and Vigitello, two renegade boatswains, one French and the other Italian, who had sailed with him on every voyage for the past two years.
The hoarse commands ceased the boatswains and their mates laid aside their calls, and the echoing midshipmen no longer found orders to repeat.
Instantly the officers of the watch called all hands up from below. The boatswains' whistles shrilled across the water as the seamen ran to quarters and cleared the decks for action. Carleton's camp was equally astir. The guards turned out. The bugles sounded. The men fell in and waited.
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