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Updated: May 3, 2025
They met with dirty weather when they had reached the thirtieth parallel, and the foul weather, and their bad fortune made them resolve to leave those seas. At a fo'c's'le council held on the 3rd of March, they determined to put the helm up, and to return to the North Sea.
"Then make sail at once," said Captain Lennard, going aft on the poop; while Mr Capstan bustled forwards, shouting out as he scrambled up on the windlass bitts and thence to the fo'c's'le, "All hands make sa-i- il!" drawling out the last word as if it were a chorus to some mariner's ditty he were singing.
"Down with the helm, quartermaster!" he cried to the man at the wheel, and, at the same moment holding up his hand to attract the attention of old Masters, who had returned to his station on the fo'c's'le, greatly exercised in his mind by what had recently occurred, he sang out in a voice of thunder that reached the knightheads and made the boatswain skip: "Haul in your jib sheet and flatten those staysails sharp!
You marry Mary Snow, Simon, and she will bear you children who will bring new light to a darkening world." The dawn was rolling up to us and the next on watch was on deck to relieve me; and the cook, too, with his head above the fo'c's'le hatch, was calling that breakfast was ready, and we said no more of that. "Go for'ard, Simon," said Captain Glynn, "and have your breakfast.
"'Bout two o'clock in th' mornin', I was woke up by what sounded like a pistol shot in th' fo'c's'le, an' before I c'd rub th' sleep out er my eyes, there was another, an' another an' another, an' I saw four sailors tumble outer their bunks an' fall on th' floor shriekin' as if they'd been attacked by th' most awful pain.
As a shell would fly past with a shriek, he would strike at it, shouting at the same time: "Put 'em over the plate, I say. Do you expect me to walk up to the fo'c's'le to get a rap at 'em? Hi, there! wake up!" Then as a shot fell short, he laughed: "Look at that drop, will you? Do you think I'm going to dive for it?"
"I will," was the response of the old sailor, as, in company with the lieutenant and Bob, he made his way through one of the watertight doors in the forward bulkhead on to the fo'c's'le; the trio then grouping themselves round the broken breech of the exploded weapon, all that was left now of the whilom big forty-three ton gun! "Ah!
"All right and tight, sir, thank God!" answered the gunner. "But I'm afraid it's a bad job with the hands for'ard, sir. I don't see anybody moving about yes, there is there's one man or two. I'll see if I can't reach the fo'c's'le and find out the extent of the damage. And, if there's hands enough left to do it, we must get some canvas on the ship at once, as you said, sir.
I need hardly say what a jolly passage home we all had; Larrikins and Mick and I, with some other old shipmates of the Saint Vincent, yarning all the way from morning till night, not much work being wanted of us as we had fine weather throughout; while `Gyp, who still retained his affection for me, exhibited his old bias for lower deck company and could not be kept away from the fo'c's'le where we were.
Dashing the paper down with vehemence upon the table, he exclaimed wrathfully: "Now, listen to me, the lot of ye. Chips and me and all hands in the fo'c's'le has signed this here doccyment because, havin' thought it all over, we're agreed that Mr Troubridge is quite right in demandin' what he do.
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