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Updated: July 12, 2025
"And so, sir," said Captain Dunning, "you call this your `misfortune?" "Surely, captain," said Glynn, putting down his cup and looking up in some surprise "surely, you cannot blame me for punishing the rascal who behaved so brutally, without the slightest provocation, to my shipmate!" "Hear, hear!" cried Rokens involuntarily. "I do blame you, lad," replied the captain seriously.
"He's safe," said Rokens eagerly. "No; he's missed it!" cried the second mate, who, with Gurney and Dick Barnes, payed out the rope. Glynn had indeed almost caught hold of the farthest-out ledge of the point when he was drawn back into the surge, and this time dashed against a rock and partially stunned.
"Wot a cross-grained crittur ye are," said Rokens, as he rose to depart. At that moment there was heard a cry that sent the blood tingling to the extremities of every one on board the Red Eric. "Thar she blows! thar she blows!" shouted the man in the crow's-nest.
"We ought," remarked Tim Rokens, puffing at a little black pipe which seemed inclined to be obstinate, "we ought to be gittin' among the fish by this time. Many's the one I've seed in them 'ere seas." "I rather guess we should," replied the cook, pausing the midst of his toils and wiping the perspiration from his forehead with an immense bundle of greasy oakum.
Tim Rokens stuck to his old commander to the last. He said he had sailed with him the better part of his life, in the same ships, had weathered the same storms, and chased the same fish, and now that the captain had made up his mind to lay up in port, he meant to cast anchor beside him. So the bold harpooner became a species of overseer and jack-of-all-trades on the property.
"I will, brother, with pleasure. I order you, Mr Rokens, to leave this house at your peril! And I invite you to partake of our dinner, which is now on the table in the next room."
Here the trader entertained Tim Rokens and Phil Briant with stories of the slave-trade; and here we shall leave them while we follow Glynn and Ailie, who went off together to ramble along the shore of the calm sea. They had not gone far when specimens of the strange creatures that dwell in these lands presented themselves to their astonished gaze.
Wot you say is that it's morally imposs'ble for a crew sich as us to travel over two thousand miles of ocean on three casks o' biscuit and a barrel o' salt junk. Wot I say is that we can, an', moreover, that morals has nothin' to do with it wotsomediver. Now, wot then?" Tim Rokens paused and looked at Gurney, to whom his remarks were addressed, as if he expected an answer.
This double remark was made to King Bumble, who passed the tobacco-pouch to his friend, after helping himself, and admitted that it was "mugnifercent." Rokens addressed his question to the captain, but Phil Briant, who had just succeeded in getting his pipe to draw beautifully, answered instead. "Och! no," said he; "that's not the way to pronounce it at all, at all. It's a huppi-puppi-puttimus."
Tim Rokens was an old salt; a bluff, strong, cast-iron man, of about forty-five years of age, who had been at sea since he was a little boy, and would not have consented to live on dry land, though he had been "offered command of a seaport town all to himself," as he was wont to affirm emphatically.
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