“Why, I means what I says, to be sure. We turned turtle. Every soul below was called to his account, and only myself and five more managed to cling to the keel.”
“She must have been a barnacley old tub,” said the cook, “else you wouldn’t ha’ got over the copper.”
“You just mind your ladle, old man,” said the carpenter. “You’re only a cook, arter all, and Pipes knows what he’s a-talking about.”
“O’ course I does,” said Pipes. “Thank ye, Chips; it ain’t very often you takes my part. O’ course I knows what I’se a-talkin’ about. The keel rolled over to us, and we easily got on top.”
“Suffer much?”
Pipes did not look at the speaker, but away into vacancy as if he were recalling the past.
“Suffer!” he said. “I hope it may never be the lot o’ anybody in this galley to know what we suffered. For three days and nights o’ storm I and one other clung to that ship’s bottom; the rest dropped off one by one or slipped willingly into the sea, glad to end their terrible misery.
“I never did think the ocean was so vast and empty-like till then, mates. All the weary days we did nothing but gaze and gaze around us, and hope and hope, and pray and pray. Well, blessed be His name, mates, God heard our prayers at last. A ship—’twas the second we’d seen, for the first took no notice of us—bore down and took us off, and that was no easy task in the condition our misery had reduced us to.”
“Listen,” cried one of the men.
There were three distinct knocks on the deck with a heavy boot; (A plan adopted in some merchant ships for calling the attention of those below to an order about to be given) then a stentorian voice sang down the hatchway,—