A Sailor in Spite of Himself

by Harry Castlemon

"I was just thinking so myself," replied Bob. "These Malays are an awful set—"

"It isn't that," whispered Ben, hastily. "Do your duty faithfully and you will have no trouble with them. But this is an English craft, as I told you. I made one short voyage under this flag, and I know that greater tyrants than these Johnny Bulls never stepped. We have been supping sorrow with a big spoon so far, but we've got to take it by the bucketful now."

"Why, I thought you said these officers wouldn't dare show any tyranny around where the Malays are."

"Neither will they where the Malays are concerned, that is if they understand their business and don't take on too much red-eye, which the cap'n and his mates never go back on, judging by the looks of their noses, and me and you have got to walk a chalk-mark or take what comes. You'll see something on board this schooner that you never saw before—a man triced up and flogged like a beast. Look there!" said Ben, jerking his thumb over his shoulder toward the fife-rail.

Bob looked, and his blood ran cold when his eyes fell upon the instrument of torture there suspended. It was a cat—he knew it in a moment from the descriptions he had often read of it. The handle was about a foot long; the lashes, of which there were a dozen or more, were cut out of stiff leather, and, to make the blows given by them more severe, they were drawn into three or four hard knots. Altogether it was a terrible-looking affair, and Bob thought, from its appearance, it had been recently used.

"Do they use that thing on these Malays?" asked Bob, shuddering, he scarcely knew why, as he returned to his work.

"Sure, and on the whites, too. That's what keeps the men straight. Be careful you don't get it over your back before you know it," was Ben's warning whisper.

As often as he found opportunity, Bob turned to look at the officers of the schooner, and he was forced to believe, with Ben, that unless their looks belied them he had not in any way bettered his situation. They were brutal-looking men, and very overbearing, as Bob soon found, for not even on board the Smart had he been ordered about as he was during the hour the crew were employed in putting things to rights. Before the work was done he saw the cat in use. The negro cook was "started" by the captain—that is, he was flogged from the cabin to the deck, because he had allowed the bean soup to get smoked. The only improvement on the Smart was in the food, which Ben assured him was as good as any sailor ever received.

During the three days that the schooner lay weather-bound in the creek Bob had time to learn something of his new mates and become acquainted with their customs. They were all brawny, fierce-looking fellows, except the first tindal, who was a stripling scarcely older than himself; but that he was a sailor was evident from the manner in which the decks and the rigging were kept. The schooner was as neat and trim as a little man-of-war. Ben quickly worked his way into the Malay's good graces. When he made up his mind to desert the J. W. Smart he secreted his whole stock of tobacco about him, and as the schooner's company had nearly exhausted their stock of the article, the old sailor freely distributed his supply among them. The Malays, in return for this, gave him and Bob a bountiful supply of bedclothing, so that they managed to fare very well, and would have been pleased with their new quarters had it not been for the dreaded cat, which they saw every time they passed the mainmast. On the third day the wind began to abate, and on the morning of the fourth the boats were got out and the schooner towed down the creek. Sail was made, and in an hour more their vessel was bounding over the waves toward Singapore.

For a time nothing exciting happened on board the schooner. Of course there was the usual amount of punishment—not a day passed that did not see the cat brought into use—and even Bob and old Ben came in for a share, the latter being knocked flat by a blow from the mate's fist, and the boy being sent to the mast-head under a broiling sun. What their offense was neither of them had the slightest idea. The nearer the vessel progressed toward her destination the more overbearing and exacting the mates became and the closer the captain clung to his bottle, of which he was very fond. Finally he got so under the influence of its contents that he was obliged to keep his bunk for two days, and his reappearance on deck was the signal for a scene, the remembrance of which disturbed Bob's sleep for many a night afterward. It had been blowing hard all day, and at last the officer of the watch, after the main-top-mast had been carried away, concluded that it would be best to shorten sail. The work had just been completed and the wreck cleared away, and the schooner was beginning to make better weather of it, when the captain staggered up the companion-way.