And what a ship it was! In place of discipline there was a disorder very afflicting to an old king’s man. Each man counted himself the equal of the other, and although Mr. Every was a hard man and quick to strike, he was submitted to only because he was a navigator, and none could take the ship so well as he.
But he could make no general move without having first a consult in which all hands took part until the confabulation sounded like a tree full of crows. We called a vote on everything,—the next place for depredation, the punishment of offenses aboard ship and the amount of plunder each man should get.
This last was a bone for the dogs to growl and bite about, I can tell you. Newcomers like the Danes were for having as much from the bag as the men who had stolen the ship at the Groyne.
“Nay,” said these; “not so, for we brought you the ship, and you give us nothing but your hands.”
“Good,” quoth the recruits. “Then we can take ourselves off and you may have your ship and be hanged.”
Thus the tree forked and on its opposite branches bore fruit of bitter will.
The small Danish sloop we were taking with us from Prince’s Island made early harvest of the animosity among us. Mr. Every would keep her as a tender; others were for selling her so that they might paw some money.
“If you sell her,” said certain ones, “what will be the shares of each?”
Thereupon the quarrel flared up, and nothing could be agreed except that Mr. Every should have two shares; that is, if the highest share were one thousand pounds, Mr. Every should get two thousand pounds, but as to the rest there was no concord; the argument being as sharp as if the money for the sloop were already in the quartermaster’s coffer. The Frenchmen recruited at the Madeiras were for the arbitrament of the dirk, seeing which—and that it was time to act—Mr. Every ordered the twenty-pounder shotted and trained on the sloop. He cut the towline and said, “Give it her betwixt the wind and the water,” and thereupon old José, the Spanish gunner, hit her so neatly beneath her lowest ports that she was not atop the waves more than fifteen minutes.
“Rather she sink than we,” said Mr. Every to the men, who now began to see that if they could not agree better the whole enterprise would be ruined.