Seventeen Weeks at Sea.
“Much better have let me had it my way, sir,” said Esau, who, ever since he had seen the John Dempsters and their treatment of me, had grown to behave as if I was his superior.
He spoke those words one day when we had been at sea about a week, the weather having been terribly rough, and the passengers suffering severely.
“Oh, I don’t know, Esau,” I said, rather dolefully.
“I do, sir. If you’d done as I wanted you we should ha’ been walking about Woolwich now in uniform, with swords under our arms; and I don’t know how you get on, but I can’t walk at all.”
“You should catch hold of something.”
“Catch hold o’ something? What’s the good when the ship chucks you about just as if you were a ball. See that chap over there?”
“What, that one-eyed man?”
“Yes; he was going to hit me just now.”
“What for?”