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With a slow step, therefore, and a heavy heart, Mark went into the cabin to make his report, and to give the second-mate the customary call. It was not an easy matter to awaken either of those, who slept under the influence of potations as deep as the night-caps taken by Captain Crutchely and Mr. Hillson.
"The devil it is!" exclaimed Captain Crutchely, who now appeared on the poop, and who caught the last part of Bob Betts's speech. "Well, for my part, I hear nothing out of the way, and I will swear the keenest-sighted man on earth can see nothing."
"And could you see nothing of breakers ahead, Bob?" demanded Mark, with an emphasis on the 'you' which pretty plainly implied that the young man was not so much surprised that the captain had not seen them. "Not a bit of it, Mr. Woolston," answered Bob, hitching up his trowsers, "and I'd a pretty good look ahead, too." This made still more against Mark, and Captain Crutchely sent for the chart.
Captain Crutchely, moreover, had a filterer for the cabin, and through it all the water used there was habitually passed. In striking the balance between the advantages and disadvantages of his own situation, as compared with that of other shipwrecked mariners, Mark confessed that he had quite as much reason to be grateful as to repine.
This report the mate repeated to the captain, accompanying it with a suggestion that it might be well to shorten sail, round-to, and sound. But Captain Crutchely treated the report with no respect, swearing that the men were always fancying they were going ashore on coral, and that the voyage would last for ever, did he comply with all their conceits of this nature.
On this last peculiarity Mark hung all his hopes of seeing his friend again, when the gale should abate. Since the moment when all the charge of the ship fell upon his shoulders, by the loss of Captain Crutchely, Mark had never felt so desolate, as when he lost sight of Bob and the Neshamony.
The Rancocus was running off, south-west, and consequently was going with the wind free. Captain Crutchely had one failing, and it was a very bad one for a ship-master; he would drink rather too much grog, at his dinner. At all other times he might have been called a sober man; out, at dinner, he would gulp down three or four glasses of rum and water.
Captain Crutchely touched at Rio for supplies, as is customary; and, after passing a week in that most delightful of all havens, went his way. The passage round the Horn was remarkable neither way. It could not be called a very boisterous one, neither was the weather unusually mild.
Long before the vessel reached the capes, he was at home in her, from her truck to her keelson, and Captain Crutchely remarked to his chief mate, the day they got to sea, that "young Mark Woolston was likely to turn up a trump." As for Mark himself, he did not lose sight of the land, for the first time in his life, altogether without regrets.
Among the seeds of Captain Crutchely were those of oranges, lemons, limes, shaddocks, figs, and grapes; all plants well enough suited to the place, if there were only soil to nourish them.
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