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Tell me what you want? Had trouble with your captain? Overstayed your leave? Or have you just got out of jail?" Now, I hadn't thought before this just how disreputable I looked. I was dressed in the slops I had got out of the Scarboro's chest, was barefooted, and was burned almost as black as any negro where the skin showed, at least.
The Scarboro carried crew enough to put out six boats at a time and still leave a boatkeeper and cook aboard. The gun forward in the Scarboro's bows, however, was there for a purpose, too, as I found out on the first day we sighted a whale. The man in the crowsnest suddenly hailed the deck, when Mr.
"You're a member of the Scarboro's crew, and you joined of your own free will. The only reason I see for my trying to get you away from here is to have you arrested and punished for getting hold of my money at Buenos Ayres. I could put you in bad for that. You be thankful you are away down here on the Scarboro, instead of at Buenos Ayres." "So you won't help me get away?" he snarled. "No, sir!"
I'm trustin' to you and Tom to pull the lad through." We got the canvas up and sheered off from the Scarboro's side. We could hear the muffled hammering of the carpenter and his mates inside her wounded hull. They were fighting to keep the old hooker above the seas. As we drifted away from the whaling bark I was not at all sure that we should ever see her above the seas again.
For a faction was forming with Hynds House as its storm-center, and it was one which threatened Mrs. Scarboro's hitherto unquestioned sovereignty. Jimmy Scarboro himself, a most personable youth, was one of the ringleaders of revolt. A weaker woman would have kept up the fight. Mrs.
The mate's boat was lowered and a chain was passed around the whale's body just forward of the tail. With this it was grappled to the Scarboro's side. I could see a dozen quarreling porpoises eating the tongue of the monster that had been, two hours before, alive and, to these scavengers, invincible. There was a broad smile on every man's face, from Captain Rogers down the line.
Then a bunch of the old Scarboro's fo'castle hands were about me. Tom Anderly pushed through the group and grabbed my hand. "Here ye be, ye blamed young scamp!" he roared. "Leavin' Mr. Gibson an' me in the lurch in Buenos Ayres." "And ye missed some of the greatest whalin' ye ever see," burst in the stroke oar of our old boat. "We got smashed up complete once and lost boat and every bit of gear.
Suddenly the sea parted right off the port bow, and not half a cable's length ahead. Up, and up the gigantic creature rose up, up, up till it towered fifteen feet above the Scarboro's rail! Then it turned a somersault, beating the sea to waves like the boiling of a cauldron.
We had had our "fun;" now we settled down to doggedly pulling the heavy oars, being divided into two watches, and saw the light of the Scarboro's trying-out works at midnight! The Captain and Mr. Rudd had both got small whales and one had been laid aboard each side of the bark. The crew were working like gnomes in a pantomime when we rowed sadly to the bark with our huge tow. How we worked!
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