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The night's work had lost us the welcome company. The day that broke was glorious enough for Nature's making, but sad upon our ship, in that the folly of eight poor fellows should have cost the life of two, with three more lying near to death in the fo'castle.

"Do you make out anything of a big ship yonder?" he asked, pointing almost abaft. "I see nothing but the hull of a collier?" said I. "Then it's my sight that's plaguing me again," and he continued to look as though he had some great purpose in satisfying himself, while from the fo'castle there came shouts of laughter and singing. When he heard this he spoke again, but almost to himself.

"You couldn't think of it? Well, when did you take command of my ship?" "You're flotsam an' jetsam, sir, an' practically in the breakers. You're sick, an', for all I know, delirious, so for the sake o' protectin' you, the sick seaman in the fo'castle an' the owners, I'm takin' command." The master of the Chesapeake reached under his pillow and produced a pistol.

The Madonna was as stanch and seaworthy as any eight-hundred-tonner in the harbor, if she was clumsy; we turned in, some sixteen of us or thereabouts, into the fo'castle, a jolly set, mostly old messmates, and well content with one another; and the breeze was stiff from the west, with a fair sky. The night before we were off, Molly and I took a walk upon the wharves after supper.

"Up, men," the captain said in a low tone to those in the fo'castle. "Bring up the cutlasses. Who is that?" he called, hailing the boat. "Merry men all," was the reply. "All right. Come alongside. You saw our signal, then?" "Ay, ay, we saw it; but there is an officer with a boat-load of sailors ashore from the King's ship at Harwich.

The cheerful groups broke up, strolling home to the mansard or to the fo'castle, with bursts of drunken or drowsy song. Davenant continued to sit crouched, huddled, bowed. He ceased to argue, or to follow the conflict between self-interest and duty, or to put up a fight of any kind. He was content to sit still and suffer. In its own way suffering was a relief.

The parson who's gone I found running a gambling hell in New Jersey; the man 'Four-Eyes' I took from a crimp at Boston; John we got later on at Rio, where we bought him from the police. I had as fine a crew of scoundrels in a month as ever cursed in a fo'castle; and I shipped them all on the screw-steamer, Rossa, which I bought for six thousand pounds from the Rossa Company.

All of them spent the better part of the first weeks at sea full length below deck. Of a calm day they lolled disconsolate over the taffrail, with one eye alert for flight down the companionway when the ship began to heave. "What are you doing back there, La Chesnaye?" asks M. de Radisson, with a quiet wink, not speaking loud enough for fo'castle hands to hear.

Then the sleepy sailors tumbled out of their bunk and into their clothes, oilskins and sea-boots and up on deck. 'Tis when that order comes on cold, blustering nights that "Jack" grimly mutters: "Who would not sell a farm and go to sea?" It was on deck that the force of the wind could be fully appreciated, especially after leaving the stifling fo'castle.

He dived into the fo'castle with the dog behind him, and there were those who noticed that the terrier's whip-like tail no longer hugged his stomach, but was waving to the world at large.