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All that day and through the night that followed the schooner drove, rolling and plunging before the seas, into the north-east, to the pulling of the spritsail. I made several excursions into the fore-hold, but never could hear the sound of water in the vessel.
The truth of this was curiously corroborated by a rather equivocal acquaintance of mine, who, among the men, went by the name of "Shakings." He belonged to the fore-hold, whence, of a dark night, he would sometimes emerge to chat with the sailors on deck.
At the foremost end of this division of the ship, so far as it was possible for my eyes to pierce the darkness for it seems that this run went clear to the fore-hold bulkhead, that is to say, under the powder-room, to where the fore-hold began were stowed the spare sails, ropes for gear, and a great variety of furniture for the equipment of a ship's yards and masts.
The cooper, nevertheless, from time to time, effected a burglarious entry, by descending into the fore-hold; and then, at the risk of being jammed to death, crawling along over a thousand obstructions, to where the casks were stowed. On the first expedition, the only one to be got at lay among others, upon its bilge with the bung-hole well over.
"And he had them all the time?" I asked. "All the time! Take my word, Mr. Pathurst, they're years old. But he's a wonder. I watched him those first days, sent him aloft, had him down in the fore-hold trimming a few tons of coal, did everything to him, and he never showed a wince. Being up to the neck in the salt water finally fetched him, and now he's reported off duty for the voyage.
"Look out for him," warned the steam-boat man; "he's a wicked brute." "Oh, I've got a little job that'll soon take the cussedness out of him," said the purchaser, with a laugh. Blue Blazes was taken down into the gloomy fore-hold of a three-masted lake schooner, harnessed securely between two long capstan bars, and set to walking in an aimless circle while a creaking cable was wound about a drum.
"Waal," replied Johnson, "I felt myself sorter obliged to clap 'em in irons down in the fore-hold. You see you muster a pretty strong party, and though you could never take the brig from us, I didn't know what you might be tempted to try, when you found out the truth; and so, just to prevent accidents, I had the irons slipped on to 'em.
The ship's yeoman is a gentleman who has a sort of counting-room in a tar-cellar down in the fore-hold. More will be said of him anon. Except the officers above enumerated, there are none who mess apart from the seamen.
The Captain notified the owner of Blue Blazes that he might take his blankety-blanked horse out of the Ellen B.'s fore-hold. The owner declined, and entrenched himself behind a pure technicality. The Captain had hired from him the use of a horse; would the Captain kindly deliver said horse to him, the owner, on the dock?
The Judge's horse was a new one, not used to the roads, Ezra's near-sighted, and I couldn't use my glasses 'count of the rain. Let alone that, 'twas darker'n the fore-hold of Noah's ark. Ho, ho! Sometimes we was in the ruts and sometimes we was in the bushes. I told Ez we'd ought to have fetched along a dipsy lead, then maybe we could get our bearin's by soundin's.
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