I was leaning against the bulwarks, making-believe to look on, cool as could be, and screwing my old mahogany phizog into what I meant to be a grin of delight at our freedom, but I know it must have been about the sort of screw that a fellow would give when lashed to a gun for a round dozen.
Mr Ward saw me grinning, and sent such a look at me as made my face grow as long as a spoon; but that wouldn’t do, and I daren’t give him any signal, so I laughed it off, and, pulling out my box and opening my knife, I goes up to him, and I says in a free-and-easy way, “Have a chaw, mate?” and made-believe to cut him one.
“You infernal traitorous scoundrel!” he shouted, and in spite of his lashings he made at me; while, making-believe to have my monkey up, I up with my knife and made a stroke at him, sending it through his pilot-coat and into one of the side-pockets, dragging at it, to get it out again, and keeping it hitched the while, till some of them laid hold of me by the arm, when, struggling and swearing, I hit out with my left hand, and caught Mr Ward upon the chest, sending him down upon the deck, when I tried again to get at him, but they held me fast.
“I’ll let him know,” I spluttered out; and then Brassey, Van’s right-hand man, gives the order, and three of his mates drags Mr Ward down the hatchway; when I pretended to be better, and only kept on muttering and scowling about like a dog that’s lost his bone, till ten minutes after, when I got a pannikin of grog, and sat looking at what was going on.
Story 2--Chapter XI.
I don’t think I’d any plans made; my only idea was, that when they sent the three or four others off, me and my mates might seize another boat, and row after them, the same night, for they wouldn’t get very far, as I knew, unless a fresh breeze sprung up, and took us away. Certainly the two boats that had gone were loaded deep, but they were not making a mile an hour; and it seemed plain enough to me that unless they could answer for its being calm till the poor wretches were picked up, if they ever were, the brutes on board had murdered ’em one and all, men, women, and children, by a slow kind of torture.
“Not very smart crews, matey,” I says, pointing with my knife over my shoulder to where the boats were slowly rising and falling, and then I fished out a piece of chicken from a tin case of the skipper’s, and went on eating away as if I hadn’t a care on my mind. “Peg away, my lads,” I says to Bill and Sam; but Bill couldn’t touch a snap. Sam made up for it, though; and after plenty of hard work and fighting, and two days on biscuit and water, and that rank yellow grease sailors get for butter, one’s teeth do get rather sharp. “Now, if you’ll just sarve another tot o’ grog round, cap’n,” I says to Van, as I wiped my knife on the leg of my trousers, “I shall be about done and ready for work.”
Some of the fellows laughed, and Van said something about my not being such a bad sort after all; but I could see as he did not trust me, which, I must say, was quite right, and the only right thing as I ever saw in the blackguard’s character.
I soon found that though they’d all doubled the Cape a good many times, there wasn’t a man with navigation enough in him to tell where we were, or how to carry the ship on her course; while, though I don’t believe I could have worked a reckoning right, yet, somehow or other, I fancy I could have shoved that old ship’s nose into the harbour for which we were bound. Their plan seemed to be to crack on due south till we’d got high enough, and then to steer west, and get into the Pacific best way we could. I give them my bit of advice when it was asked, for I thought that the more we were in the track of ships, the more likely we were to be overhauled; but they would not have it my way; and Van giving his orders, a lot of us sprung up to make sail. When lying out on the main-royal yard, I run my eye round and quite jumped again, for, bearing down towards where the boats were crawling along, there was a bark with every stitch of canvas set.