But there was one chap aboard as the captain seemed quite to hate, and used to put upon him shameful. He was a thin wiry fellow, as yellow as a guinea, and looked as if he’d black blood in his veins; but he always swore as he had not. He’d got a Dutch sort of name, Van Haigh, but hailed somewhere out of one of the West Indy Islands, and had knocked about almost everywhere. Curious-looking chap he was, looked as if he’d always got his parlour window-blinds half pulled down, and he’d peep at you sideways from underneath them in a queer catlike sort of way. He was quite a swell fellow in his way, only dirty as dirty, and that didn’t do nothing towards setting off the big silver rings he had in his ears, and was uncommon proud of. We mostly used to call him “Van” for short; and against this chap the skipper always seemed to have a spite, bullying him about more than all the rest put together, till you might have thought his life would have been miserable—but not it; he always showed his white teeth and grinned, pocketing all that the skipper and the mate gave him, till them pockets of his must have been full and nigh unto bursting. Once the captain knocked him down with a marlinespike, but he never drew no knives, not even when the mate kicked him, and told him to get up. He only grinned, but it was a queer sort of grin, and I didn’t like the look of it.
These sort of rows used generally to take place when the passengers had gone down of a night, or before they came on deck of a morning. While before the cabin lot, Captain Harness was quite the gentleman, and it seemed to me that he had a sort of hankering after Miss Bell, like some more of them, or else he wouldn’t have been so wonderfully civil about having Mr Bell’s chair moved here and there, and wanting him to take wine, and things that Mr Ward said he was better without.
As to the fore-cabin passengers, they went on just about the same as fore-passengers mostly do: asked every day whether we were nearly there, played ship’s billiards, and a bit or two of music; smoked a deal, and slept a deal more, and only did just so much work as they was obliged to. No doubt there was their little bits of squabbling, and courting, and so on, going on; but my eyes were turned in another direction; and, soon after we’d crossed the line, I couldn’t help thinking how very sixy-and-seveny matters had growed. Instead of being friendly, there was quite an unpleasantness between Mr Ward and the Bells, for the sick man was as jealous as could be, and it was plain enough that he downright hated the doctor. As for Miss Bell, as far as I could see, she never even bowed to him, and he and Tomtit used to walk up and down the deck together, as if they were the fastest of friends. “And why don’t they bow to one another as they used?” I says to myself, as I lay in my hammock. “Why don’t you mind your own business and go to sleep?” says Common-sense; and as I was too tired to argufy, I made no answer, but went off sound.
Story 2--Chapter V.
Now, if what I’m going to tell you had happened a week sooner, I should have been on the look-out for it, or if it had come off a week later; but, like many more such things, it came when it wasn’t expected, and my sails were took aback as much as anybody’s.
Things had been going on more peaceably than usual—weather having been hot, with light steady wind, which just took us easily through the water with stunsails set alow and aloft. The heat had made the captain sleepy, and he showed precious little on deck, while the mate, who always took his tone from the skipper, used just to give an order or two, and then make himself as comfortable as he could.
It was my watch one night with Sam Brown, Bill Smith, and a couple more. Hot! it was one of the hottest nights I ever knew, and we were lolling about over the sides, looking at the golden green water as it gently washed by the bows as we just parted it, making only way enough for the ship to answer her helm. Bill Smith had gone to take his trick at the wheel, and, looking along the deck, you could just make out his face by the binnacle-light shining up and around him. There was a faint glow, too, up from the cabin skylights, and from where the ship’s lanterns flashed on the water, else it was a thick darkness everywhere, and us sailing through it, and seeming to get nearer and nearer to some great black heat, that made the perspiration stream out of you at every pore.
“’Nuff to bake ’em down below, Sam,” I says, after we’d been quiet for a good hour. “I fancy if I was there, I should be for coming up and lying on the deck, where it’s cooler.”
“Cooler!” says one of them with us, “why, the planks are hot yet.”