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The Irishman seized a heavy iron pump-handle as a weapon, and Salvé a handspike; and Salvé kept his word. He pulled the boots off as the other lay senseless on the deck, and took them down to the Spaniard. In point of physical strength, Salvé was far from being the equal of many of these men, who, he knew very well, were now only looking out for an occasion to get the better of him.
To make a sailor shoulder a handspike, and walk fore and aft the deck, like a sentry, is the most ignominious punishment that could be put upon him. Such a punishment inflicted upon an able seaman in a vessel of war, would break his spirit down more than a flogging.
"My dear chap," said he, "you'd knock down the chief mate, and he'd spread you out with a handspike. You'd get tied by your thumbs to the rigging. You'd be fed on stinking water and putrid biscuits. I've been reading a novel about the merchant service, and I know." When I laughed at his ideas of modern sea-going he tried another line. "You're a bigger fool than I take you for if you go," said he.
I worked my foot on till I came to the end of it, and then contrived to draw from under one of the casks what proved to be a handspike, which had probably on some occasion dropped down into the hold. I can't express the satisfaction the possession of this instrument gave me. I felt it all over, and tried its strength by a blow on the kelson, for at first I was afraid it might be rotten.
He sighed as he thought of the forecastle that he knew somewhere awaited him; how he would recall those still nights in Oa when he would be roused by the boatswain's handspike on the hatch, and the hoarse cry of "All hands on deck!" One day, when he was out in Faalelei's boat, an accident occurred that came very near to being the end of Jack.
The mate advised the men to take a reef in their belts when they felt hungry. `Ay, ay, sir, answered Tom, laughing, `it's the best way to keep hunger out, when there happens to be no plum-dough to stow aboard. `I wonder who will have ours, exclaimed another of the men. `I'll lay anything Dick Handspike does his best to get my share. Thus the men joked and laughed as if we were not in the middle of the Atlantic, with a fearful probability of being starved to death.
In fact, if you want to know the ear marks of a handy man's "story," look out for the smart gentlemen in veiled references without any facts which can be transfixed by either a pin or a handspike. When you find the innuendo without the handhold of fact, lick your lips if you are keen on carrion; for I promise that you have come on a morsel.
His person was long, straight, and sinewy, and there was a light springiness and elasticity in his step which would have suited a younger man, as he skipped along with a long handspike over his shoulder. He was singing a stave from the "Enniskillen Dragoon" when I came up with him. "With his silver-mounted pistols, and his long carbine, Long life to the brave Inniskillen dragoon."
On going forward I saw one of the prisoners in the act of falling overboard, and another extended full length on the deck, while my stalwart quarter-master was flourishing a handspike with which he had knocked one of his assailants overboard and floored the other. Now it will be asked what was the man at the wheel doing? Hereby hangs a tale. He swore that he heard or saw nothing.
Newton was on his legs at the same moment, and retreating, seized upon the handspike, which lay on the deck, close to where Jackson had been struck down, and placed himself in an attitude of defence. Not a word was exchanged between them.
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