Tom and the prize-fighter talked together whilst Mr. Bates got the boats alongside and superintended the stowage of provisions and water in them. I went into the shadow of the awning to get out of the heat of the sun and to remove myself from Tom, that we might not be seen together constantly. Some of the ringleaders, as I must term the fellows whom the convicts undoubtedly regarded as heads or chiefs under Tom or Abram, joined my sweetheart and the prize-fighter, and the air speedily hummed with the eager, animated talk of the crowd. Will joined me, and we watched the long-boat. She had gone about a mile, and they had hoisted the sail for the shelter of its shadow. It hung like a sheet of silver from its yard, without a stir, so smooth was the sea, so still the air. The soldiers continued to sweep the boat along; the oars glanced like hairs of silver as they rose and fell.
Will went to the binnacle to judge of the course the boat was making. The scoundrel seaman who grasped the wheel growled out with a low, coarse laugh and in a cursing voice some remark I did not catch.
‘You wouldn’t have said that yesterday,’ exclaimed Will, and came back to me without taking further notice of the miscreant. ‘They are heading due west,’ said he. ‘I don’t suppose they will make up their minds till the other boats join them.’
‘What is the nearest land?’
‘The Brazilian coast. But the nearest is a long way off. There’s but a small chance for them outside of being picked up. And yet what a lump of a boat she is compared with the gig! When is she to be provisioned? And when are we to get away? And when we’ve got away, what’s going to happen? Good angels, I wish we were both at Stepney!’
‘Leave everything to Tom,’ said I, ‘and do as he tells you.’
He looked at me with a mutinous eye, went to the rail and stared over the side. Tom and the council of convicts had left the poop. I peered through the skylight; the cuddy was empty, the table covered with fragments and remains of food with broken china and broken bottles and glasses, and the deck scarcely fit to walk on for the wounding stuff that strewed it. I went to the break of the poop to see what they were about on the main-deck. Both quarter-boats were alongside and a gang of convicts were stowing them. The decks were filled with the people, who, since the departure of the long-boat, had grown orderly. The mass of them conversed in knots; groups hung about the galleys. They had discovered pipes and tobacco—tobacco there would be in plenty for the guard and the crew, and possibly a stock of pipes. A number of the convicts had pipes in their mouths, and their profound enjoyment of the tobacco, after months and, perhaps, years of penitential abstinence, undoubtedly helped to keep them quiet.
The sun stood something to the left of north, and the tall, motionless spaces of canvas on high cast shadows over the decks, and betwixt the rails the high noon was endurable. A thick, sickly smell of roasted paint rose from the ship’s side. If you put your hand upon the exposed wood or any piece of metal, you were burnt as though you touched hot iron. I thought to myself: If these unhappy wretches should run short of water! If this calm should hold them motionless here for days and perhaps for weeks! For calms often serve ships so in these parts, as I had heard my father and his sea friends tell. I sought to compute the number on board, and, allowing for those who were presently to leave the ship, I calculated we should muster hard upon two hundred and fifty souls. When Tom left them, what would the miserable creatures do? But, then, what was that to me? All I cared for was that Tom should come off with his life and be a free man, no longer a degraded criminal, clanking in irons, to be mangled by the cat, perhaps, at the will of any ferocious Tasmanian ruffian who might take a dislike to him. The convicts had seized the ship. One had but to look toward the now distant long-boat to appreciate the felons’ estimate of human life. I could not pity them when I thought of how they would have kept the women and children and of the havoc they had wrought below, and when I looked at their faces, recalled their songs and oaths in drink, their bestial speech, and saw the plunder on their vile backs.
Tom and Abram and a little crowd of men stood near the gangway. My sweetheart looked on. He gave no orders. Poor Mr. Bates did all the work of superintendence, and watched the convicts as they slung the provisions and water for the seamen into the quarter-boats. When this work was ended, some cries were raised; the throngs of people gathered about the main-hatch and filled the quarter-deck; the armed malefactors formed a lane as before, but this time the fiddler did not make his appearance.
A hoarse voice at the main-hatch summoned the fellows below to come up, and one after another the crew arrived. The huge one-eared boatswain, with his staring, glassy eyes, scowled round him with daring, defiant looks. Abram stood in the gangway and he halted every man ere passing him over the side to say: ‘You cad stop with us if you like. We’re short of worki’g ’a’ds and we’ll treat you as one of us. What’ll you do?’
Mr. Balls made no answer; he passed sullenly on; so did the sailmaker and carpenter. Mr. Stiles, with a bewildered look at the convicts and then through the gangway at the white gleam of sea visible there, wiped his face on the sleeve of his convict jacket and said: ‘Where might you be bound to, sir?’
Some one cried out: ‘That bloke was the ship’s steward. He’s of no use.’
‘Over you go,’ said Abram, giving Mr. Stiles a dab with his immense hand between his shoulder-blades, and the steward went with a run to the gangway and disappeared down the ladder.
Two of the sailors agreed to remain. Will, who had come to my side, told me that they were the poorest, most skulking and worthless of the forecastle hands. The convicts, however, cheered when these fellows said they would stay, and the armed men opened to let them pass into the crowd. Will’s fellow-apprentices looked up at him as they went to the boat, and one made a face as though to express his disgust at what he took to be my cousin’s disloyalty or cowardice. I marked the effect of this upon Will, and grasped him by the arm, whispering passionately: ‘Not a word!’ and knew by the working of his face that I was just in time to arrest some angry protesting sentence that might have endangered him and me too.
Whilst the seamen filed through the gangway, I chanced to look down upon a crowd of convicts on the quarter-deck, and spied a fellow pick another man’s pocket. He did it with admirable nimbleness and dexterity. Both men, the thief and the victim, were dressed in Lieutenant Chimmo’s clothes. The man that was robbed was the rogue who had held up Captain Sutherland’s gold watch and chain as though he meant to play at bob-cherry, and it was this watch and chain which the other sneaked with inimitable adroitness.
I supposed no one but myself saw this; many stood about, close, too, and the fellow stole the watch with the most foolish, staring, innocent face you could imagine, looking at the seamen going through the gangway as though he could think of nothing else. But scarcely had he snugged the watch and chain in his side-pocket, when another convict next him whipped it out with incredible skill and swiftness. Indeed, I should not have remarked the motions of the rogue’s hand but for the gleam of the gold. A minute later, the first convict put his hand to his pocket and missed the watch. He turned furiously upon the second convict, shouting: ‘A thief! A thief!’ for all the world as though he had been some respectable man in the streets just robbed. The felon who had the watch roared out: ‘A thief! A thief!’ and fell upon the second convict whose pocket he had picked. A scuffle followed. The second convict, whose guilt appeared to be assumed by all who stood near, as though they knew him as a thief without morals and capable of robbing a brother-thief, was kicked and beaten, and a mob of shouting convicts, with this rascal in the midst of them, surged forward, and I took notice that the rogue who shouted the loudest and kicked the hardest was the fellow who had the watch.
This commotion caused no uneasiness amongst the crowd who stood on the side of the deck where the open gangway was. No doubt they understood what had happened, and guessed that enough were concerned in the scuffle to insure justice being done.
By this time both quarter-boats were filled with the seamen. I dare say there were eleven or twelve men in each, and more could not have gone without peril, for they were small boats, though they were stout and fairly new. Bates had seen that each craft had its proper equipment of mast, sail, oars, rudder, and the like. One of the ringleaders, a sallow-faced convict with a hare-lip and but two or three fangs in his upper jaw, roared down to the seamen to shove off, and in a few minutes both boats were heading in the direction of the long-boat, which had come to a stand awaiting them. Many convicts sprang upon the bulwarks and howled out insults in the wickedest language of the slums, in the most revolting speech of the great city rookeries and haunts of sin and infamy. The seamen rowed away in silence.
Tom came on to the poop and looked at me a little while with a face of grief and horror, as though his very soul shrank up within him, to think that I should be a spectator of such scenes and a hearer of such language. I read his mind; he would not approach me to speak.
Barney Abram followed, and with him were the hare-lipped man and some score of convicts, of whom half might have been principals in the seizure of the ship.
‘Let’s get to busidess,’ said Abram. ‘Talk to the people as was arradged, Butler.’
On this, Tom, laying hold of the brass rail, leaned forward and cried out that every man was to come together on the quarter-deck, as he had a few words to say to them. Mr. Bates stole up the ladder to my side and, without speaking, gazed with a look of bitter distress at the receding boats. Still was the ocean as polished a plain as ever it had been during the morning. The sun flashed up the water into blinding dazzle in the north-west, and the heat was terrible. There was no motion in the ship to fan the lightest of the topmost cloths; the atmosphere floated like the breath of an oven, without refreshment of the draughts which circle about a deck when the becalmed craft leans with the swell and her courses and topsails swing. The convicts massed themselves upon the main-deck; their faces were white or scarlet with the heat. The drink had been distilled out of them by the roasting temperature, and the unhappy beings stood looking up at Tom with as orderly a bearing as ever they exhibited when the doctor addressed them.
‘Men,’ said my sweetheart, ‘I’ve taken charge of this vessel. It’s the interests of everybody aboard her that I’ve now to consider; it’s for us, all assembled as we are, to consider what’s to be done. And first understand this: No ship can be sailed without discipline. Look aloft, men, at those vast heights. You see for yourselves what a complicated thing a ship is. If I and the mate of your own election,’ and here he pointed to Mr. Bates, ‘give an order, it must be promptly obeyed. If not—but you’re not fools—you can guess what must follow if we’re not obeyed. I’ll not interfere in any arrangements which don’t affect the safety of the ship. You’ll sleep where you choose, and eat when you choose, and whatever you do that doesn’t concern our lives will be no business of mine. But remember, there are nearly two hundred and fifty of us!’
He was interrupted by some voice shouting out the exact number.
‘You taste this weather, don’t ye? You can guess how it would fare with us to run short of water, and next to that would be the running short of provisions. You must be willing to go on allowance.’
‘Willing? Of course. That’s to be expected,’ broke in three or four of them.
‘Those amongst you who have been seafaring men will unite with the sailors and form a crew and take the forecastle for your quarters, which must be your own, never to be intruded upon. Is that understood?’
‘Understood!’ was the answer, in a roar.
‘The rest will form themselves into three watches under heads, as in the doctor’s time; and every watch will come on deck turn and turn about, and stand by to assist the crew by pulling and hauling, cleaning and making the ship sweet, and so helping to keep you all alive, ready for the run ashore when the hour comes.’
A great cheer echoed this sentence.
‘Mr. Bates,’ continued Tom, ‘knows where everything is stowed in this ship. He’ll sample your food for you and name you your water allowance. Use him kindly, men. He’s of first-rate consequence to us.’
When this was said, Barney Abram crossed to the mate, brought him to the middle of the break of the poop, near to where Tom stood, and there, in the sight of all the convicts, shook him by the hand. This was done in silence, but it was a very expressive performance—some might hold after the Eastern manner, seeing who was the main actor.
Tom went on: ‘I must have the captain’s cabin; the navigating instruments of the vessel are there and certain conveniences of furniture. The chief mate will also need his cabin; he’ll share it with that young gentleman,’ said he, pointing to Will. ‘If any of you in the hurry of this morning has mistaken Mr. Bates’s effects for Captain Barrett’s or the other officers’ or the commander’s, I’ll beg him to return them. He is our friend, and Mr. Abram wishes him to be well used. It is not right he should be thus dressed.’
‘Look at yourself?’ cried a voice on the quarter-deck.
‘Yes, but I’m a convict!’ exclaimed Tom, savagely.
This raised a roar; a hundred men seemed to speak at once; they yelled out to this effect—that there were no longer any convicts aboard that ship, that they were all free men, that they had got their liberty and meant to keep it, and so forth.
‘Order!’ bawled Abram, raising his arms above his head. ‘We’re here to discuss batters quietly. The capt’id’s talked very sensibly, ad I’b with hib up to the hilt as far as he’s gord. Are those your sedibents?’ said he, looking round at the little crowd of convicts who stood near.
‘There must be discipline,’ answered one of them, ‘and Butler’s talked very good sense so far.’
‘How about the stock of spirits?’ exclaimed a tall, thin, pale, grey-haired convict, dressed in an officer’s shell-jacket too short for him—so that when I think of him now it is always somehow in connection with Mr. Dickens’s incomparable figure of Smike. ‘’Sponsible men are wanted to see to that.’
‘You’re right, Williams,’ said Tom, giving him an emphatic nod.
‘Every cask of spirits,’ continued the man, speaking somewhat nasally and amidst a silence that might have rendered his voice audible as far as the forecastle, ‘is full of little devils swimming about. And every little devil, when he’s swallowed, carries seven other little devils, all a-clinging to one another’s tails, down into a man’s inside. Call it eight devils,’ said he, raising his voice. ‘One for each eye, is two; one for each ear, is four; one for the tongue’s, five; and there’s three over to keep the others goin’ it. ’Sponsible men, Abram, if that there sea is not to shut up this pleasing dream of liberty.’
‘Men,’ said Tom, ‘there’s sound reason in what you’ve heard. But I spy good sense breaking out amongst you all. Don’t let your feelings carry you away. Look at the mess in the cuddy! What good has your drunken, breaking scramble done? The sober and sound amongst you should compel the men who smashed up that pleasant interior to clear it out, and to make it a shipshape abode for those whose quarters it’s to become.’
Some one shouted: ‘We’ll have that done!’
‘Dow talk to us about where we’re to go,’ said Abram.
‘Talk to me, and I’ll advise you,’ said Tom, with his eyes upon the crowd beneath, folding his arms and standing erect.
‘You’re a navigator and know the world,’ exclaimed the sallow, ill-looking man with the hare-lip.
‘Aye, and I’ll counsel you when you’ve spoken and want advice,’ said Tom.
‘Where are we now?’ exclaimed a convict on the quarter-deck.
‘Shall I give it to you in parallels and meridians?’ answered Tom, with a sort of angry scorn in his voice. ‘You wouldn’t understand me. Suppose Mr. Bates brings you up a chart, there’s no room for hard upon two hundred and fifty heads to overhang it at once; and how many of you can read, that it should be passed around? Now listen: We’re in the middle of the ocean to the north of the Equator. Yonder,’ said he, pointing over the port beam, ‘many hundred leagues distant, is the Gulf of Guinea and the great bight of the African coast from Cape Formosa to Cape Frio.’
The convicts turned their heads all one way, staring like one man, some of them getting on their toes to look.
‘Yonder,’ continued Tom, pointing over the starboard beam, whereupon the heads of the convicts went round as before and all the poor, ignorant wretches stared as though by looking they’d see the land, ‘is the great Brazilian seaboard from Cape St. Roque to Rio Janeiro.’
I observed that Abram gazed at Tom with an indescribable smirking grin of admiration, as though struck by his familiar acquaintance with land entirely out of sight.
‘But my words,’ continued my sweetheart ‘give only a few who are educated amongst you any ideas. Yet I can tell you no more than this: That we are in the heart of the great Atlantic Ocean, and that a huge world for choice is spread on either hand, away in the Pacific by rounding Cape Horn and away in the Indian and Southern Oceans by rounding the Cape of Good Hope. Where shall I carry you to?’
A number of the convicts spoke at once.
‘Wud at a tibe! Wud at a tibe!’ yelled Abram.
‘Let’s go home!’ shouted a man on the quarter-deck.
‘Debate it,’ said Abram.
An uneasy stir ran through the mass of the convicts, and a long, deep growl of dissent.
‘Home!’ cried Tom, passionately. ‘How’s home called in English? What’s its name? Is it Newgate or Millbank or her Majesty’s ship Warrior? Is it the Dockyard and the Arsenal and irons and handcuffs, cursing warders and carbines ready for your brains? You want my advice; I’ll counsel you.’
Some angry laughter broke from the men.
‘Who’s the madman that talks of home?’ shouted Tom. ‘Shall I sail you up the Thames and moor ye alongside the hulk? Is Plymouth your port, or do you choose Portsmouth?’
‘Why not try for the islands about Torres Straits?’ exclaimed one of the convicts who had been a seaman. Several bawled to know where Torres Straits were.
‘To the nor’ard of Australia,’ replied the convict. ‘There the sea’s thick with islands. Plenty to eat and drink, mates, and casting away a ship is as easy and safe as drawing a cork.’
‘Ain’t Norfold Island hard by?’ exclaimed another.
‘My idea,’ said a ringleader, raising his voice as he overhung the poop-rail, ‘is to beach the vessel on the West Coast of Africa. There we breaks up into parties and disperses, and every party has their yarn ready manufactured to account for theirselves ag’in’ being met with or falling in with a settlement.’
‘Were you ever ashore on that coast?’ exclaimed Tom.
‘No,’ answered the man.
‘Then put this picture before you, one and all, for I who address you know what I am saying: Not a patch of verdure; leagues of sand like glass, glaring and shining; a few half-starved jackals; a few bushmen, who live on beetles and putrefied seals and go clothed in stinking sheepskins; a hare or two at long intervals, and a few sand-plants; the sun at noon like a lantern looming in vapours; here and there penguins braying; here and there sea-fowls shrieking, and the surf roaring always. Is that good enough for you? You’d be clean-picked bones in a week.’
All this while the ocean remained breathless. Far away were the two black specks of quarter-boats, and beyond was the gleam of the long-boat’s sail, a point of light under the horizon like the image of a star. Fortunately for the convicts, the lay of the yards flung the shadow of the canvas upon the deck. Otherwise it was broiling where the sun was. The poop was sheltered by the awning that stretched from the mizzen-mast to the brass rail. Many of the people stood with their coats over their arms and their shirts open. A mist rose from them. I figured how it had been at night in their quarters when I saw that mist and the motionless wind-sails and the main-hatch half sealed with its cage-like barricade.
‘May I speak?’ cried a man on the quarter-deck, lifting up his hand.
‘To the poi’t,’ answered Abram. ‘Every bad with ad idea bay speak; but to the poi’t.’
‘Here’s a big ship,’ said the man, in a very fair cultivated accent (he was about six-and-twenty years of age, had held a situation as a clerk and had been sentenced for forgery), ‘and we’re a numerous and powerful company of determined men, needing nothing but the organisation that Captain Butler’s capable of. I propose that we chase small vessels and capture them, send their crews adrift like those yonder, man each captured craft with a number of ourselves, every lot containing a proportion of those who are sailors or who have followed the sea. This would disperse us. Every crew would do as they thought proper with their own craft. I should be for wrecking mine on some safe coast near a town where we could represent ourselves as castaways.’
The convicts listened with close attention. Abram looked at Tom, who made no sign.
‘What d’ye say to it, Butler?’ shouted a fellow.
‘Do what you please,’ answered my sweetheart.
‘Advise us,’ said the hare-lipped man.
‘It’s a landlubber’s fancy,’ said Tom.
A number of men talked at once. One of the original crew of the Childe Harold roared out: ‘It’s smothering rot! The capt’n’s laughing at you! Chase! In a craft arter this pattern, with twelve or fourteen hands and a working crew, ne’er a great gun nor a soul saving the capt’n and the mate as ’ud be capable of navigating them small craft after they was boarded and taken!’ He spat hard and turned his back in contempt.
‘My notion’s been this all through the blushen piece,’ said a beetle-browed, flat-nosed, ruffianly looking convict. ‘Sail to an oninhabited hisland and settle him. A hisland where there’s grub agoing in fruit-trees and beastesses of fish what crawls upon the beach, all which there’ll be some here as has heard of. Where water trickles sweet an’ cold, and the weather it ain’t too hot. There, upon that hisland, we can concoct and consart, and them what pleases can be took off by passing vessels. The others will be a-doing as did them mutineers of the Bounty whose capt’n he was named Bligh. We moors this ship and keeps her handy. Females ain’t ever fur to look for. In this ’ere ship wives can be brought from places which ain’t too fur off and where the colour won’t be wrong, the ’igh seas being vide of choice. That’s bin my notion all through the fired piece.’
‘Who’s next?’ shouted Abram, impatiently.
One of the remaining crew of the ship—a sailor with a cast eye and a head of hair so exactly resembling oakum that no convict could look at it without finding something personal and a sort of reflection in it—this man, who sat high-perched above the heads of the throng on the quarter-deck winch, snapped his fingers at the poop and asked leave to address the gents.
‘What d’ye want to say?’ shouted the hare-lipped man, who, I gathered, ranked next to Abram as the principal ringleader.
‘Gents, all,’ cried the fellow, ‘man an’ boy, I’ve followed the seas for two and twenty years, and in that time I’ve sailed all about the world and there’s scarce a furrin part as I haven’t visited. Now, if I was you, speaking with Captain Butler’s good leave, what I’d do’s this: Round the Horn t’other side of South Amerikay there lies what’s called the Narth Pacific Ocean. From the Sandwich Islands, right away to this side the Philippines, including of the Ladrones and the Caroline Islands, it’s all chock-a-block with the sort of little countries ye oughter visit. A lovely cordial drink they manufactures out of cocoanut juice. There’s no call for clothes. The natives are friendly disposed. Them as ain’t are easily knocked over the head. White men like yourselves live in them islands. If I was you gents, I’d get Captain Butler to steer the ship into the Narth Pacific, touch and discharge a score of ye, touch and discharge another score, touch and touch again till this here multitude was broke up. That’s my notion, gents, and your chance, and I’ll ask Captain Butler what he thinks.’
‘It’ll do!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘I would propose nothing better.’
On this there was some confusion, owing to a number of the convicts cheering, whilst others shouted questions to the poop. The silence upon the sea, and the ship lying as stirless as though she were at anchor, made this strange council of convicts somewhat ironical to my mind. It was hard to cast one’s eye over the lake-like ocean and realise the North Pacific as a part of the world that was to be come at by the vessel. Tom’s approval of the seaman’s scheme seemed to settle the matter. Many questions, most of them ignorant and ridiculous, were bawled. They were answered from the poop, sometimes by Tom, sometimes by Abram and the ringleaders, and sometimes they were answered by fellows on the quarter-deck.
After a little, and whilst the decks were a-buzz with the vast noise of talk, the prize-fighter asked Mr. Bates to produce a chart of the islands named by the seaman. Mr. Bates fetched a chart. It was a big sheet with a blue back, comprised a portion only of the North Pacific, and was very clearly drawn and printed. This chart was laid upon the skylight and the corners weighted. The principal convicts drew in a body to it.
I stood near and overheard the talk. They called up the sailor, and he pointed to three or four of the islands which he said he had visited. The hare-lipped man asked him if British ships of war cruised in those seas. He answered that here and there a small surveying-vessel might be fallen in with, ‘but nothen to take notice of,’ said he, ‘nothen that’s going to hurt ye. It’s your best chance, gents. Many sorts of vessels are a-touching at them islands for water, nuts, and sometimes for their entertainment, and often again for their convenience. The sailors run, ’specially from the South Seamen. You’ll have your yarns ready in case of questions; but down in them parts curiosity ain’t what you might call active. Stick to this here scheme, and there’s nothen to hinder any man as has a mind to retarn home from finding himself arter a year or two in Lunnon again, with dollars enough in his pocket to keep him in wittles till something turns up.’
‘All that this man says is very true,’ exclaimed Tom. ‘He’s given us a good scheme. We’re obliged to him.’
Saying this, he edged out of the crowd about the skylight and, seeing me abreast of the rail, came and stood beside me.
‘Is it a good scheme?’ I whispered, without looking at him.
‘It will amuse them,’ he answered softly. ‘I must seem in earnest. What do I care?’
‘You control them wonderfully.’
‘Poor wretches!’ he muttered, and, stepping to the companion-way, took the ship’s telescope out of its brackets and pointed it at the three boats upon the sea. Their situation was now determinable to the naked eye by the dim, tiny gleam of the long-boat’s sail.
‘They’re sneaking westward,’ said Tom, talking low with his eye at the glass. ‘The American seaboard may give me the chance I want. Eastward nearly everything afloat is British—curse the name!’
By this time, the convicts on the quarter-deck had got wind of the chart on the poop and were crowding up the ladders to look. That all might obtain a sight, Abram bawled a recommendation to them to form themselves into small divisions. This was done. The chiefs or ringleaders broke up the mass into little gangs, and one after another these gangs came to the skylight and overhung the chart. The cast-eyed sailor with the hair of oakum stood by to answer questions and pointed out the islands. Some of the educated convicts dwelt upon the chart so long, musing, running their fingers down the meridians, calculating distances and so forth, that the waiting gangs howled at them with impatience. Yet all was now orderly as one could wish—far more orderly than I had dared expect.
As the gangs passed on from the skylight aft, viewing the chart and questioning the cast-eyed man, they broke up and hung about various parts of the poop or returned to the main-deck. The coarse joke, the loud, brutal laugh was frequent; but there was no horse-play, none of the former huge, hideous, cart-horse gambolling, shouting, and tipsy fighting. The heat lay upon the people like a weight. Their spirits were sobered by the extraordinary oppression of the vast, silent, roasting calm.
‘Abram,’ called Tom, holding the telescope and still standing at my side, ‘let some of the men—those responsible for the mess—clean the cuddy out. Look through the skylight. The deck’s full of broken glass. And my advice to you and the others is to arrange without delay for the distribution of the people for the night. You’ll want cooks. Those who have been cooking so far should continue. They know what’s needed, where to seek, how to manage. Mr. Bates here will counsel you on quantities. I wish to see the ship cleared fore and aft, and everything ready for any sort of weather that may come along. Ay, and there’s more yet. Suppose an English man-of-war heaves in sight and signals us, we must know what to do and be in readiness to do it. The pennant’s an old cure for dull sight. A devilish keen eye that never winks lies spliced in the fly of every man-of-war’s whip. And d’ye see that, Abram?’ he cried, pointing at the sea over the starboard quarter.
Twenty or thirty convicts were upon the poop, and they all turned their heads and stared in a hurrying, eager way in the direction indicated by Tom’s levelled forefinger.
‘See what?’ exclaimed the prize-fighter, lifting the sharp of his massive hand to his brow, and straining his black, fiery vision.
‘That dark blue line.’
Tom stepped to the rail and cried out: ‘Stand by, all you seamen aboard this vessel, to trim sail!’ Then turning to Abram: ‘Tumble the people to their work of cleaning up, will ye?’ he cried. ‘Put the cooks to their duty; we can’t starve!’ He then turned to me and, placing the telescope in my hand, said loudly: ‘Marlowe, replace this, then go to your berth and carry what belongs to you to my cabin, and wait for me there.’