While strong and loving arms raised the exhausted man from the deck, and while he becomes once more the same determined Paul Darcantel, and with hand grasped in hand is rapidly recounting unknown years of his existence, let us leave the cabin.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
ALL ALIVE AGAIN.
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“Among ourselves, in peace, ’tis true, We quarrel, make a rout; And having nothing else to do, We fairly scold it out; But once the enemy in view, Shake hands, we soon are friends; On the deck, Till a wreck, Each common cause defends.” |
Down in the steerage, where a bare cherry table stood, and upright lockers ranged around, with a lot of half-starved reefers devouring their dinner––not near so good or well served as the sailors’ around their mess-cloths on the upper decks––with a few urchins utterly regardless of steerage grub, and a dollar or two in their little fists, all nicely dressed in blue jackets and white trowsers, waiting for the hands to be turned to and the boats manned, to go on shore for a lark.
Abaft in the wardroom, two or three of the swabs, the surgeon’s mates, and the jaunty young marine lieutenant were getting into their bullion coats and fine toggery, and buckling on their armor to do sad havoc among the planters’ families in the evening, away there in Upper Kingston. As for the first lieutenant, the purser, the fleet surgeon, the sailing-master, and the old major of marines, they had been ashore before, and didn’t care to go again; growling jocosely among themselves on board the frigate, and glad to get rid of the juvenile gabble.
Presently, and before the hands were turned to from dinner, the cabin bell rang so violently that the orderly’s brass scale-plate fixtures on his leather hat fairly rang too as he opened the sacred door.
“Tell the first lieutenant I want him.”
The dismayed soldier forgot to lay his white worsted finger on his visor as he slammed to the door and marched out on the gun-deck.