"That's sensible. Do whatever you are ordered, and don't make any fuss about it. I will put myself out to give you an insight into your duties, and, as we belong to the same watch, I will promise to be on hand whenever I can to assist in any work you may have to do. I'll keep you out of the hands of the mate."
"By the way, Ben, have you any clothes for your bunk?"
"I have," replied the old sailor. "I got them of some of the men, and I guess I shall have to go to them to get a change of duds, for there is no slop-chest aboard."
"I got some of the cook. I wonder what my father would say if he knew where I am? I promised that I would never go to sea, and here I am, a sailor in spite of myself."
"Your father didn't know that you had some enemies at home who would help you go to sea," said Ben. "If he had, he might have told you to look out for them."
If time and space would permit we might tell of many interesting and some thrilling events which happened during the next few months, all of which Bob witnessed, and in several of which he was the principal actor; but when one reads a story of the sea it is like telling it over again. The sailors were treated on this voyage no worse than they were on any other voyage they ever made—not even during the hurricane off the Mauritius, when a belaying-pin from the mate's hand and a sailor disappeared at the same time and were never heard of afterward. It was an accident, and the second mate so reported it; but such "accidents" did not happen every day, and Bob, who saw the whole proceeding, was anxious to get out of the power of such a man. But such incidents as these must be hurried over, because they have no bearing on our story. It will be enough to say that the J. W. Smart passed the Cape, went safely through the hurricane of which we have spoken, and a few days later made her first stop at a small, uninhabited island, to refill the water-casks, which the captain had emptied to lighten the ship during the gale.
It was night when they got there, and Bob and old Ben, who stood the first anchor watch, seriously discussed something they had often talked of during the voyage—desertion. They did not decide upon anything definite that night, but Ben promised to think it over and be ready on the following morning with a plan that would surely succeed. This assurance enabled Bob to carry to bed with him a lighter heart than he had known for many a day.
"Doctor, I'm going off now," said he, as he met his friend and ally in the galley. The negro had often talked to him of desertion, and sometimes, when Bob thought it too hard to undertake, he had always gone to work to cheer him up.
"'Fore de land!" he exclaimed, rolling the whites of his eyes up in delight. "But I ain't seed you get in de boat yet."
"No, but I am going to get in one when it is called away."