Like most wooden ships, the Higgins had to be pumped out twice a day, once in the morning watch and once in the second dog-watch.
A ship's pumps are worked by handle-bars on heavy flywheels, and it is probably the finest exercise in the world for your back muscles, especially if you have a bucko like Black Davis to watch over you and keep you doing sixty revolutions to the minute for half an hour without a spell.
The bosun was not such a keen muscle-developer, and in consequence the starboard watch only averaged thirty-five to forty revolutions a minute, and also had a spell-ho after fifteen minutes.
Notwithstanding this, Studpoker Bob, who had a horror of any sort of form of muscle-developing, used to let his arms go round with the brakes, and so managed that, instead of his arms pulling the brakes, the brakes pulled his arms.
This man was fast beginning to show up in his true colours.
As Broncho observed to Jack:
"That ere kyard-sharp don't surge back on a rope suffeecient to throw a calf. He's shore regyardful of his health that-away; yet he's a-distributin' views in the foc's'le like as if he's the most put-upon gent in the ship, which same views is shore fomentin' trouble."
"The man's a real waster," replied the rover. "I watched him dealing a brace game last night against Hank, Ben, and those two tenderfoots, Jimmy Green and Pinto. I believe he's got notes for most of the men's paydays already, and now, as you say, he's trying in a sneaky, underhand way to rake up trouble; but sailors always will walk blindly into the ditch, and won't be warned."
"Which his mood is shore ornery an' he's plumb wolf by nacher; but as you-alls sagely remyarks, them misguided shorthorns won't believe it none, an' listens to his howlin' like he's the President of the United States. It has me plumb wearied," and Broncho sniffed disdainfully as he slowly filled his favourite corncob.
But matters were rapidly coming to a head. The Higgins had lost the south-east trades, and was plunging into a heavy head sea under topgallant-s'ls, whilst a succession of sprays turned the forward part of the ship into a shower-bath, and ever and anon a green sea tumbled aboard and roared aft.