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Updated: June 2, 2025
"Why I come just now from your forepeak a most unpleasant, filthy hole, Angus! And less recently, I come from my grave, from that shameful grave of stripes and bars to which your lying words sent me, Angus! I've come to pay you a visit, to sail with you. Why, I'm on your articles I am 'A. Newman. An apt name, a true name eh, Angus? Come now, are you not glad to see me?"
The root-principle of direct coercion, necessarily inherent in any system that seeks to foist an arbitrary and obnoxious status upon any considerable body of men, was slowly but surely bursting into bud. The years that had seen the unprested seaman freed from the dread of the yardarm and the horrors of the forepeak, had bred a new terror for him.
Oi wor a-coomin' oop the forepake afther dark, jist ez it mebbe now. Ye knows the forepake, Joblins?" "Ye-e-es," stuttered out `greeny, his jaw dropping with fright, and his mouth open as big as a teacup. "I I I knows the forepeak, mate."
"A man in the forepeak eh?" yelled out Captain Gillespie, all his complacency gone in a moment, his voice sounding so loudly that it deadened the moaning of the wind through the shrouds and the creaking of the ship's timbers, whose groans mingled with the heavy thud of the waves against her bows as she breasted them, and the angry splash of the baffled billows as they fell back into the bubbling, hissing cauldron of broken water through which the noble vessel plunged and rolled, spurning it beneath her keel in her majesty and might.
Others were on deck ready for action, but the chief mate prevented them going into the forepeak, which caused both suspicion and irritation. The captain gave them permission. Two went forth full of hope and confidence that they were on the point of reaping their reward. They had no sooner got down than indescribable cries for God to help them were heard. A rush was made to see what had happened.
The orders were that none should sleep on deck during the voyage to the Catwick. "All because the old man brings a skirt on board, we have to sweat blood in the forepeak!" growled Flint. "We've got a right to a little sport." "Sure we have!" The speaker was sitting on the edge of his bunk. He was a fine specimen of young manhood, with a pleasant, rollicking Irish countenance.
"Moses Murphy!" cried the captain. "How did she strike? Bows on, I believe. And she's down by the head now. If any carpenter comes tinkering here where'll he go first? Down in the forepeak, I suppose! And then, how about all that blood among the chandlery?
The impulse was to dash into the forepeak and so plunge overboard, flinging away all caution, but before their palsied muscles could respond, the behavior of Blackbeard held them irresolute and curious. He had turned his back to them and was shouting boisterously to others to follow him. Seven men came through the doorway, one after the other, hanging back with evident reluctance.
When the Frenchman and the black had jumped down into the forepeak, Tim Fid had very wisely clapped the hatch on, so that they were left in darkness, and were also unable to return again on deck. Pringle was on the point of taking off the hatch to secure the two men when the midshipman got forward. "Very glad, sir, to see you all to rights," said Paul, looking up.
When Peter first took me on board, some of the seamen would scarcely believe I was the same little boy they had seen at the fair, I looked so much stouter and stronger in my seaman's dress. I did not much like the look of the forepeak, into which Peter introduced me, telling me that it was to be my house and home for the next few years of my life.
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