Rushby thought for a while, stroking his short black beard which was like that of a Russian Czar.
"Maybe," said he, "at Caracas, I could desert and take you with me. I have no liking for my shipmates here, as you may well imagine. In the meantime, many weeks must pass before we sight the mainland, and in that time much may happen."
As he said this with some significance, I asked him what he meant.
"Why, just this," he answered; "there's trouble brewing aboard, which will come to a head before we touch port. The crew are a low-down, blackguard lot, no better men than sailors; and though they may be held to blame for that, it's no fault of theirs if they are fed worse than swine and cursed from dawn to sunset. Dagg I had heard about, though I never signed on under him before, nor will again, and the mate's even worse. There's high talk in the fo'c'sle, as it is, where the ringleader is that nigger cook. Mark my words--and I've sailed the seas for more than twenty years--a prize-fighting negro in the galley can cause more mischief aboard a sailing-ship than a monkey and a woman, both in one."
I laughed, for I was not then accustomed to the talk of sailors.
"And they've run out of lime-juice," he went on; "and that's a serious thing."
"Lime-juice!" I repeated, thinking he was joking still.
"A man must eat vegetables," he explained to me, "to keep his blood cool and his liver nicely trimmed. You can't eat green cabbages and Brussels-sprouts in mid-Atlantic, so you must carry lime-juice aboard; and we've run out. The men have much to complain of. They are in ill health, and one or two should be lying up in a sick berth, instead of being sworn at left and right for not moving quicker. So I see trouble ahead. It may be a hurricane, or just a summer squall; and if the first, Heaven help James Dagg and his officers, for they're a tough lot for'ard, as I know who've listened to their talk."
And Rushby was proved to be in the right. We ran into a great calm as I have said. The sea was like glass; and though the sun was blotted out by a steam-like fog, the heat was so intense that we went about the deck in naught but vests and trousers, with the sweat dripping from our finger-tips.
Without a doubt, the crew suffered for lack of lime-juice; some broke out with a horrid skin disease. And then the news came that the tinned meat had all gone bad, and we were forced to live on salted ling-fish, so that we went thirsty all day long.