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Updated: May 25, 2025
I wasn't over well off on my first voyage, though my mother had paid a premium to the owners and I was on the quarterdeck, but I saw while I remained on board that there was no use complaining, so I took things as they were, and by keeping my eyes open and my wits awake became in a short time a fair seaman."
The Company drank steadily, and Strokher, listening from the schooner's quarterdeck, heard the shouting and the songs faintly above the wash and lapping under the counter. Two hours had passed since the moment he guessed that the feast had been laid. A third went by. He grew uneasy. There was no cessation of the noise of carousing. He even fancied he heard pistol shots.
When all this treasure had been transferred to Drake's vessel, the Golden Hinde, the admiral sent for the Englishmen who had been rescued from the Santa Filomena, and gave audience to us on the quarterdeck. A sad and sorry multitude we looked, spite of the surgeon's care, as we stood gazing at the great sea-captain who had rescued us, and waiting for him to speak.
As a class the packet sailors became more and more degraded because their life was intolerable to decent men. It followed therefore that the quarterdeck employed increasing severity, and, as the officer's authority in this respect was unchecked and unlimited, it was easy to mistake the harshest tyranny for wholesome discipline.
I can tell little of what took place till I found myself on the pirate's quarterdeck, after a desperate tussle, and having driven the crew overboard, with dead and wounded men thickly strewn about, and our fellows busy firing at their surviving antagonists, as they were trying to gain the shore by swimming.
Great massive mounds of blue water piled themselves up in the concealment of the low-hanging rain-clouds, rushed out upon us with white foaming crests ten feet above the quarterdeck, and broke into clouds of blinding, strangling spray over the forecastle and galley, careening the ship until the bell on the quarter-deck struck and water ran in over the lee gunwale.
One of them had cocked his pistol, and was taking a deliberate aim at Paul, when True Blue, who at that instant had reached the quarterdeck, lifted his arm and fired. The Frenchman staggered a few paces, fired his pistol in the air, and then fell to the deck. To prevent his companions from seizing his weapons, Fid drew them from his pocket and bolted off with them round the deck.
"Iceberg ahead!" shouted Paul, and he never hallooed louder in his life, "a little on the starboard bow." "Starboard the helm," cried Harry from the quarterdeck. "Man the starboard braces. Brace the yards sharp up; call the captain; all hands on deck to save ship." Such were the orders he issued in rapid succession.
There was gratitude and passionate loyalty in the demonstration, and it continued long after the figure on the quarterdeck had turned away and the drifter had resumed her noisy, triumphant tour of the Fleet. "That's what I likes about 'im," whispered a bearded seaman hoarsely, as they swung off on their new course. "'E's that 'Uman!"
On shore, though less fortunate in the way of state, he would have been considered as fully my equal in position. Talcott and myself remained on deck together nearly the whole of the first night and the little sleep I did get was caught in a top-mast studding-sail that lay on the quarterdeck, and which I had determined not to set, after rowsing it up for that purpose.
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