“Same here,” said another. “I never done anything of the sort yet, and don’t know how to set about it.”
The others were expressing themselves to the same effect, when Williams darted forward, and, seizing the first speaker roughly by the collar, savagely demanded:
“Look here, you scoundrel, do you mean to say that you won’t go?”
“Ay, ay, shipmate, that’s just exactly what I do mean,” was the answer, given good-naturedly enough. “But take your hand off my collar,” the man continued more sternly. “Two can play at that game, you know; and I doubt whether you are man enough to thrash me.”
Williams, white as death with passion, prudently withdrew his hand from the man’s collar, and stepped back a pace or two.
“What does this mean?” he demanded. “Are you going to mutiny, men, before our cruise has even commenced?”
An insolent laugh greeted this inquiry; and the man who had just spoken answered:
“Call it what you like, Cap’n Josh; mutiny is as good a name for it as any other, I reckon. And what I mean is, that I, for one, ain’t goin’ ashore on no man-huntin’ expedition. There was nothing said about man-huntin’ when the articles for this here cruise was drawed up; and what I say is, if Tom Nicholls wants to cut and run, let him do it.”
“Ay, ay; so says I,” added another of the men. “He never entered into the thing with no spirit, anyhow; and if he’d rather be ashore there than makin’ his fortune aboard here with us, why, let him stay ashore, says I. ‘No manhuntin’’ is my sentiments.”
Several of the other men now declared themselves to the same effect, whereupon Williams, finding himself in the minority, said, with as perfect an assumption of indifference as he could command at the moment: