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They fanned the flame of discontent, and it was not difficult to convince their shipmates that they were very hardly used; that the new captain was imposing a heavy burden upon them. Some of the best disposed of them were in favor of waiting upon the principal, and representing their view of the case to him; but the more impetuous ones laughed at this plan.
The willing crew answered him with a cheer, and Tom Tarbucket, a square-built, merry faced native of Savage Island, who was stripped to the waist, shouted out, amid the laughter of his shipmates "Ay, ay, capt'in, we soon make pump suck dry if two Miss de Boos girl come." Robertson laughed in response, and then picking up a wooden bucket from under the fife rail, clattered down the companion way.
Supposing that the whole day would be too long a time to spend ashore, as there was no place to which we could take a ride, we remained quietly on board until after dinner. We were then pulled ashore in the stern of the boat, for it is a point with liberty-men to be pulled off and back as passengers by their shipmates, and, with orders to be on the beach at sundown, we took our way for the town.
The author has a dear friend, a naval officer, who was, as is here described, the instrument of bringing some of his shipmates to a knowledge and acceptance of the truth; one especially, from being an infidel, became a faithful follower of Christ. His bones lie sepulchred under the eternal snows of the Arctic pole.
"Only as he had been with me through the circumstance of casual meeting as fellow shipmates." "Er was he, in your opinion, Miss Strong, a man who drank to excess?" "I do not know that he drank at all he certainly had not been drinking up to half an hour before I saw that body fall overboard," she answered, "for I was with him on deck up to that time." "It is very strange," said the captain.
"Another man and I were ordered into the boat to unhook the falls, as the tackle is called by which the boat is lowered. Just as we had got into her a tremendous sea came roaring up, and striking the ship, broke over her and the boat, and very nearly washed us out. A loud noise was heard of the crashing and rending of the timbers and planks, above which rose the cry of our shipmates.
Pat had helped himself along by striking out with his feet, though he was but a poor swimmer; indeed, I have scarcely ever met an Irish seaman who could swim. We could make out other people still floating at some distance. Now and then a cry was heard. We shouted in return, but there was no reply. It was the last despairing utterance of one of our shipmates, before he sank below the surface.
In no case, however, but that of the direst necessity, did Mark contemplate the abandonment of his plan for getting back to the inhabited world, his country, and his bride! That night our mariners had a sounder sleep than they had yet been blest with since the loss of their shipmates, and the accident to the vessel itself. The two following days they passed in securing the ship.
From him, downwards to the smallest boy in the ship, everybody was most painfully anxious about them. He instantly despatched boats in all directions to search for the missing party. All sorts of reports were flying about on board; and as sharks were known to abound, it was feared by the seamen that they might have destroyed their young shipmates.
We washed down the flesh with some excellent rum, a few casks-full of which my shipmates had discovered near the scene of the catastrophe, in frozen forms, like jellies turned out of a tin, for the wood had been completely torn off when the ship went to pieces.
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