“‘Look here, shipmates all, I for one have had quite enough choppin’ and changin’ about of skippers in this hooker,’ he says; ‘and,’ says he, ‘so far as I’m concerned I don’t want no more. I’ve nothin’ to say again’ Carter there, but I’m not goin’ to acknowledge him as skipper of this packet, and I don’t fancy as how any of you will, either. Of course,’ he says, ‘if there’s any of you as is anxious to have him for skipper, and wants to go heavin’ out cargo and runnin’ away kedges, and what not, under his orders, instead of goin’ ashore with me into them woods, huntin’ for fruit, he’s quite at liberty to do so, I won’t say him nay; but you may as well make up your minds now as any other time whether you’ll stick to him or to me; so now what d’ye say, shipmates—who’s for Carter, and who’s for Tonkin?’
“And I’ll be shot, Mr Grenvile, if every mother’s son of ’em didn’t declare, right off, without hesitatin’, for him! Whereupon he ordered me in here, and told me not to dare to show my nose out on deck again until I had his permission, or he’d have me hove over the rail. And I was to tell the passengers that they might go up on the poop if they liked; but that if e’er a one of ’em put his foot on the main-deck he’d be hove overboard without any palaver. Now, what d’ye think of that, sir, for a mess?”
“Have any of them been drinking, think you?” asked I.
“Well, yes, sir, I think they have,” answered Carter. “That is to say, I think that most of ’em have been pretty well primed—just enough, you know, to make ’em reckless. But there was none of ’em what you’d call drunk; not by a long way.”
“And were any of my men among them?” I asked.
“Oh no!” was the answer. “Your men—but I forgot—you don’t know what’s happened to them. The whole lot of ’em, sound and sick alike, are locked up in the steerage—Simpson, Martin, and Beardmore bein’ in irons.”
“And what about the steerage passengers?” I asked. “Where are they?”
“Why,” answered Carter, “there are only five of them, all told. Two of them—Hales and Cruickshank—both of whom are thoroughly bad characters—have chummed in with Tonkin and his lot; while Jenkins, with his wife and daughter, are in their own cabins in the steerage. Mrs Jenkins and her daughter, Patsy, have been busy acting as nurses to your wounded men, under Dr Burgess’s instructions, ever since you came aboard us, and they are doing very well.”
“That is good news,” said I, “and I will see that the two women are properly rewarded for their trouble. Now let us see how we stand. How many do the mutineers muster, all told?”
“Twenty-five, or twenty-seven if we count in Hales and Cruickshank,” answered Carter.