For five days the Higgins did not average twenty miles a day, and the whole of one baking Sunday she swung idly on her heel in the clutches of a Paddy's hurricane, whilst a stick of wood floating at her side would be sometimes ahead, sometimes astern.
Several of the men in their day watches below fished indefatigably from the jibboom, and Broncho soon had his first taste of albacore.
The flying-fish attracted him immensely, and he seemed never to tire of watching them as they flashed in and out of the water in glittering streaks of silver.
"I allows them fish has a high an' lavish time of it, a-pirootin' round permiscuous that-away. I shore wonders it don't exhaust them none, the way they hustles around," observed the cowboy to Jack Derringer, as they reclined lazily on the foc's'le head one afternoon watch below.
"A good time? Not much! Why, the albacore and bonita chase them out of the water, and the bosun-birds swoop down upon them in the air; they spend all their time flying from one enemy into the clutches of another."
"You don't say? It's shore some mean the way Providence cold-decks them fish that-away; yet they seem plenty numerous, notwithstandin' the way they're up agin the iron," drawled Broncho, as he slowly cut up some tobacco and refilled his corncob.
When within a few miles of the line the Higgins was put about for the first time.
This piece of seamanship was not executed without a vast amount of belaying-pin soup, even Broncho, the notorious desperado, getting his share in the heat of the moment.
The crew were raw and undrilled, and soon were worried into a hopeless tangle.
As the bosun had to attend to the crossjack and main braces in charge of the starboard watch, Jack was placed in command on the foc's'le, with Hank and Pat to aid him. This post is always reserved for the best men in the ship, for in a fresh breeze the men on the foc's'le have a most lively time.