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A stout, broad platform was held firm between the canoes with many lashings of sennit, a strong, but yielding, framework on which was a small house of straw where the crew lived. We had no nails, but we used wooden pegs and thousands of cocoanut-fiber ropes, so that everything, aloft and alow, was taut, but giving in the toss of the sea.
Sennit as prize-master, Captain Wallingford and I commenced reasoning with that gentleman on the impropriety of sending in a neutral and breaking up a promising voyage, which so overcame the said Lieutenant Sennit, in his mind, that he consented to take the ship's yawl with a suitable stock of provisions and water, and give us up the ship.
I have seldom seen a more thorough-looking sea-dog than your mate, Captain Wallingford," this was the first time Sennit had dignified me with this title, "and I took a fancy to him on that account, as soon as I saw him. You will do me the favour to sup with us in the cabin, I hope, for I see signs at the galley that it will soon be ready?"
When the captain was passive in the hands of his foe, the cockswain produced sundry pieces of sennit, marline, and ratlin-stuff, from his pockets, which appeared to contain as great a variety of small cordage as a boatswain's storeroom, and proceeded to lash the arms of the conquered soldier to the posts of his bed, with a coolness that had not been disturbed since the commencement of hostilities, a silence that seemed inflexible, and a dexterity that none but a seaman could equal.
I was, by nature, a stronger man than Sennit, besides being younger and in my prime; while Diggens would not have been more than a child in Marble's hands. As for the man at the wheel, Neb could have thrown him half-way up to the mizen-top, on an emergency.
Sennit, condescending to notice my bow; "your servant, sir; I suppose we owe the pleasure of your company, just now, to the circumstance of the weather's clearing." This sounded hostile from the go off; and I was determined to give as good as I received.
The hunters have experimented and practised with their rifles and shotguns till they are satisfied, and the boat-pullers and steerers have made their spritsails, bound the oars and rowlocks in leather and sennit so that they will make no noise when creeping on the seals, and put their boats in apple-pie order to use Leach's homely phrase.
I thought the rising anger of the last was a little subdued by the appearance of his senior officers: social position and private rank making even a greater difference between the two, than mere date of commission. Sennit suppressed his wrath, therefore; though I make no doubt the resentment he felt at the contumelious manner of my mate, had no little influence on what subsequently occurred.
Her fenders were done all over with white sennit which was truly white; her big gun was varnished with a better composition than the Admiralty allowed; the spare sights were cased as carefully as the chronometers; the chocks for spare spars, two of them, were made of four-inch Burma teak carved with dragons' heads that was one result of Bai-Jove-Judson's experiences with the Naval Brigade in the Burmese war; the bow-anchor was varnished instead of being painted, and there were charts more than the Admiralty scale supplied.
When all was ready, each ship started away from the vacant point on the ocean, where they had been lying for hours, moving on diverging lines, at a rate that soon put a wide expanse of water between them. I felt the circumstance of being left under the command of such a man as Sennit almost as sensibly as I felt the loss of my ship.
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