"Neber you mind, Dick, as long dey only use der tongue."
He grinned and pointed with his finger, so that the rest fancied that he
was only mocking me as they were.
Notwithstanding this, the fresh air and the necessity of exerting myself
did me good, and after I had taken some food that Caesar brought me when
the men went into their berth to dinner, I felt quite another creature.
At nightfall I was allowed to slink into my bunk, of which Tom still
refused to deprive me.
"I'm very well where I am. I'm accustomed to it, and you are not,
Dick," he said, when I begged him to let me change places.
The next day I was still better, and after this I rapidly recovered my
strength, notwithstanding the cuffs and kicks and rope's-endings I
frequently received, and the hard work I had to perform.
My clothes were soon again as dirty as they were when I came out of the
hold, and torn and tattered besides.
"Never mind, Dick," said Tom; "I'll rig you out in a suit of mine, which
I'll cut down to suit you when we get into colder latitudes. It doesn't
much matter about having old clothes now the weather is so hot."
Mark regretted that he could not help me, as he had only the clothes he
stood up in, which would have been almost as bad as my own had they not
been of stronger material, and thus held out better.
Though the rest of the crew ill-treated Mark and me, and Tom also when
they had the chance, the captain and officers tyrannised over them in
the most brutal fashion. It was no unusual occurrence for the first
mate to heave a handspike at one of the men when he did not go about his
work in a way to please him, and both captain and mates swore at the men
on all occasions in the most fearful way.
At first I was horrified, but in time I got as much accustomed to it as
they were, and was only thankful that the oaths were not accompanied by
a rope's-ending.
All this time the discipline was really very slack, and the men behaved
to each other as they pleased, and never failed to neglect their duty
whenever the mates' eyes were off them. Still they resented,
notwithstanding, the treatment they received, growling fiercely, if not
loudly, when the quality of their provisions had begun to fall off. At
first the food had been pretty good, but it now became worse and worse,
and the men swore that they would stand it no longer. At last, when
some rancid pork had been served out with musty peas and weevilly
biscuits, the men went aft in a body, headed by the boatswain, Sass
Jowler, and Growles, who were deputed to be spokesmen, to the
quarterdeck, where the captain was walking.
"I axes you, Captain Longfleet, whether you think this ere stuff is fit
food for British seamen?" said the boatswain, holding up a piece of the
pork at the end of a two-pronged fork.
"It makes um sick to cook it," said Caesar, who was standing behind the
rest.
"And I wants to know, in the name of the crew, whether this 'ere biscuit
as is all alive with maggots, is the stuff we poor fellows forward
should be made to put into our mouths?" cried Growles.
"What's that you're talking about, you mutinous rascals?" cried the
captain; "stop a bit, and I'll answer you."
Saying this, he sprang back into the cabin, and while the men stood
staring at the door without advancing, he reappeared with a pistol in
the one hand and a cutlass in the other. I observed that he had a
second pistol in his belt.
"You know I never miss my aim, you scoundrels. The first man that
utters a word on the subject I'll shoot through the head. The food's
good enough for better men than you, so be off forward, and let this be
the last time I hear any complaint. If not, look out for squalls."
The men stood irresolute, and no one liked to run the chance of having a
pistol-bullet sent through his head.
"Are you going, you villains?" thundered the captain, pointing his
pistol at the boatswain.
He used a good many other stronger expletives, which need not be
repeated.
The boatswain was a bold fellow, but his courage gave way, and he
stepped back. The others, overawed by the determined manner of the
captain, imitated the example of their leader, knowing that the pistol
might be turned towards any one who stood his ground, and together they
retreated forward, tumbling over each other in their endeavour to put as
wide a distance as possible between themselves and their now furious
commander.
For my part, I felt a greater amount of respect for him than I had ever
done before. His eye did not for a moment quail, his arm appeared as
firm as iron. Had he shown the slightest hesitation, the men, in the
temper they were in, would have been upon him, and he would have lost
his authority.
Mark and I remained at one side of the deck, where we happened to be at
the time. Tom Trivett had not come aft, having refused to take any part
in the affair, whereby he gained still greater ill-will than before from
his shipmates.
The discontent which had thus shown itself, though kept down for a time,
was by no means quelled. We had to eat the food, bad as it was, though
perhaps not altogether as bad as the samples exhibited to the captain.
The third mate came forward much oftener than before, and tried hard to
win back the men into something like good-humour, but his efforts were
unavailing.
"You see, Mr Simmons, as how we poor fellows have got to work hard, and
except we gets good grub we can't do it," I heard the boatswain remark
in an insinuating tone; "it's very hard lines for us to have to eat
rancid pork and weevilly bread, when we knows well enough that the
captain and mates has good grub in the cabin. Share and share alike,
and we sha'n't complain. But we must abide by it till the ship gets
into harbour, and then we suppose that the captain will be getting good
stores aboard and will serve out fresh meat and vegetables."
"Oh! Of course he'll do that," said Mr Simmons, pleased, as he
thought, at having brought the men to reason. "You know Captain
Longfleet is a just man, though he's a determined one, and won't stand
nonsense. Everything will go well, I hope, by-and-by."
I should have observed that our boatswain held a very different position
among the crew to that occupied by a warrant officer on board a
man-of-war. He was merely one of the men, and was so called from
certain duties he had to perform, and was a sort of link between the
officers and the crew.
We were now in the tropics. When there was a breeze the heat was
supportable enough, but when it fell calm we could scarcely bear our
clothes on, and went about in shirts and trousers, with bare feet, and
were glad to have the opportunity of getting into the shade. The pitch
boiled up out of the seams, and old Growles declared that he could cook
a beefsteak on the capstan-head, if he only had a beefsteak to cook.
The heat did not improve the temper of the men, and the ship became to
Mark and me a regular hell afloat. Matters were almost as bad with Tom
Trivett, but he could hold his own better than we could.
One day Mark came to me.
"I say, Dick," he exclaimed--a common fate had made us equal, and he had
long ago dropped the master--"I've been hearing that to-morrow we're to
cross the line. I wonder what sort of place we shall get into on
t'other side; as far as I can make out, it's a kind of bar, and those
who go over it for the first time have to pay toll to old Daddy Neptune,
who is coming aboard to collect his dues."
I was surprised that Mark had never heard of the line, and so I tried to
explain to him what it was. As to Neptune coming on board, I knew that
that was all nonsense, and so I told him.
During that evening and the next morning some of the men were busily
engaged in their berth, into which they allowed no one but themselves to
enter.
Soon after noon the captain, having taken his observations, gave notice
that we were about to cross the line. Mark and I had been sent aft,
when we heard a voice hail as if from under the bows.
"What ship is that?"
"The `Emu,'" answered the captain, who with the officers was standing on
the poop.
"Where did you come from, and for what port are you bound?" asked the
voice.
"From Liverpool, and we're bound to Rio and round Cape Horn," answered
the captain.
"All right, Captain Longfleet; with your leave my wife and I will pay
you a visit and bring some of our children and attendants, and if you
have any youngsters who have not crossed the line before, we shall have
a word to say to them."
"You're welcome, Father Neptune, for I suppose no one else would be
desirous of giving me a call out in these seas."
It was amusing to observe Mark's look of astonishment when immediately
afterwards a party of grotesque figures appeared clambering over the
bows. The first was an old fellow with a long white beard, a gold paper
crown on his head, and a sceptre in his hand, and dressed in a flowing
robe painted all over with curious devices. With him came a huge woman,
also wearing a crown and garments of many colours, a necklace of huge
beads and a couple of clasp-knives hanging down from either side of her
face to serve as ear-rings; another figure followed them equally
curiously dressed, with a basin under one arm, a pair of sailmaker's
shears hanging round his neck, and a piece of rusty hoop shaped like a
razor in his hand. A fourth person, tall and gaunt, was seen in a
cocked-hat, a thick cane in one hand, and a box of pills of large
proportions in the other. Following them came a party of monsters in
green dresses with long tails, and heads covered by oakum wigs.