“Ah! I see. And what would you like? Shall I have a hold cleared out and fit up with four-post beds for you to make a drawing-room of? Shall I order my steward to hand iced pop round to the gentlemen who are heavin’ coals in the stokehold? Come now, out with it!”
The little captain was deliberately irritating the men, and Onslow marveled at his recklessness. Once let an outbreak start, and he and Kettle stood not one chance in a million of living through it. But Kettle knew his game, and was playing it well.
Only one man laughed, and his laugh closed up again in a moment like the snap of a watch. Some scowled, a few swore; the quartermaster in the cardigan jacket alone remained unmoved. Of Kettle’s outrageous raillery he took no notice whatever, but continued his plaint in a solid monotone, as though he had been reading it from a book.
“In the first instance, it’s the grub we complains of, partic’ly the sugar. It ain’t sugar at all; it’s just a slump of molasses.”
“That,” said Kettle, “is due to your own laziness. The bottom of a sugar barrel’s always that way unless you turn it end for end every day or so. The molasses ’d settle through the Queen’s sugar at Windsor and spoil half of it unless the barrel was looked to. By James!” he continued, with a first show of fury, “is it for this you dogs have turned yourselves into a howling pack of mutineers, and let my ship drift like a hen-coop towards Newfoundland?”
The quartermaster was obviously disconcerted by the attack, so much so, in fact, that he missed the next few counts of his indictment, and came at once to the main head.
“It’s a rise of wages that we insists on principally,” he said. “We take it we’ve been signed on for this run to New Orleans under false pretenses. Nothing was said about the sort of cargo we was to carry, which, naturally, incites them anarchist chaps to vi’lence. We’re suffering undue risks. There’s been one devil machine found already, and as like as not there is others besides. The bloomin’ ole tramp may go up any minute; and because we’re standing that risk, we say we ought to be paid accordin’. The cargo can stand the pull, and if you aren’t willing, the hands here has made up their minds to broach it for themselves.”
Kettle did not answer at once. He seemed to be twisting words over and over in his mouth, and then gulping them down his throat and bringing up others. It was a full minute before the man found speech, but then it came from him in a torrent. “You great fools!” he cried, “this isn’t an ordinary cargo that you can help yourselves out of, and let the underwriters stand treat. You bet the tallyman won’t wink at any yarn about ‘damaged in transit’ over the stuff we’re bringing out. If there’s so much as a miserable half-sovereign missing, the whole crowd here, cook and captain’s dog, stay in a New Orleans calaboose till it’s found, and then come out with their tickets dirtied. Oh! you one-eyed, mutton-headed fools!”
Onslow stared at the man curiously. His truculent tone had left him completely. His hands had quitted the pistol-butts and were gripped on the bridge rail. His elbows were beating nervously against his ribs.
From some mouth in the blacker shadow came a deep, derisive laugh; and then a voice (presumably from the laugher) said: “Who wants to go to New Orleans? Who wants to go nearer than the next key, or reef, or sandbank, or whatever it may be? Let’s pile up the blazing old tramp on that, and then boat-cruise across to Cuba. There’s nice, snug bays in Cuba, where the guardacostas don’t ask questions; or, if they did, a bit of yellow ballast out of the boats would stop their jaws quick enough.”