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Grey to bid the boatswain's mate pipe the hands on deck and bring the cook aft. "Quartermaster, unsling a fire-bucket and fill it from the men's kids: Mr. Tickell, see the cook swallow his own mess. Bosen's mate, take a bight of the flying jib sheet stand over him, and start him if he dailies with it."
Pretty soon two tawny boys appeared, one with an ordinary fire-bucket, such as are seen hung everywhere on shipboard, and the other with a cluster of rope rings hung on one arm. Behind them came Hope, with Mr. Malcolm and Dwight in tow, the former carrying a small blackboard; all in great good-humor over something.
I changed my clothes, made a fire in the fire-bucket with shavings and ends of soft wood, boiled the billy, and had a cup of coffee. It was Saturday night. My mate was at the Royal; it was cold and dismal in the tent, and there was nothing to read, so I reckoned I might as well go up to the Royal, too, and put in the time. "I had to pass the Bank on the way. The 'Advertiser' office was next door.
I came to an opening covered with an old sack. Pulling this a little to one side I was greeted with a volume of suffocating smoke. I proceeded further, and diving in under the sack, got inside the room. In the midst of the smoke, sitting beside a crushed and battered fire-bucket, sat a man, his face illuminated by the flickering light from the fire.
I suppose sponging is all we can do." Graham nodded. He had stripped the leather-covered cushion from the conductor's chair, and with this and a rolled coat made a support for the senseless head. He had a fire-bucket of cold water, and even as he plied the wet sponge and sought to stanch the trickling blood, his wits were at work.
He sees a people strange and unfamiliar in costume and expression; fierce, stern-looking officers, rigid in features, closely shaved, and dressed in glittering uniforms; grave, long-bearded priests, with square-topped black turbans, their flowing black drapery trailing in the dust; pale women richly and elegantly dressed, gliding unattended through mazes of the crowd; rough, half-savage serfs, in dirty pink shirts, loose trowsers, and big boots, bowing down before the shrines on the bridges and public places; the drosky drivers, with their long beards, small bell-shaped hats, long blue coats and fire-bucket boots, lying half asleep upon their rusty little vehicles awaiting a customer, or dashing away at a headlong pace over the rough cobble-paved streets, and so on of every class and kind.
"Ah, what a sacrifice! what a sacrifice!" he sighed, tearfully eyeing the solitary fire-bucket, and then glancing round the company for sympathy. "A sacrifice, indeed!" exclaimed Jack Chase, who stood by; "Purser's Steward, you are Mark Antony over the body of Julius Cesar." "So I am, so I am," said the auctioneer, without moving a muscle.
The chief slave-driver, whose name, I remember, was Alvarez, saw it too, and called out: `Juan, this heretic is fainting; bring the fire-bucket. "The man brought it; Alvarez took out a white-hot iron, and oh, sirs, I cannot describe what then happened, but I can hear that man's shrieks now, as I tell of it! It was awful; and would shrivel my tongue to relate, and your ears to hear.
Under a heap of firewood in an outhouse I found a large pile of coal. This was splendid, and would be invaluable to us and our fire-bucket. Nothing pleased me more than this, as the cold was very severe, and a fire meant so much to us.
Elias Peters rolled slowly out of the saddle and reached the ground with a heavy flop. Then, while its recent burden gathered himself up, quite unhurt and smiling amiably in relief, the horse contentedly mouched off toward a patch of inviting grass. "Guess I'm kind o' late, Mr. McFarlane," Elias apologized. "An' it seems I've bust up your fire-bucket some," he added ruefully.
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