“The brig’s called the Albatross; and my name is Johnson—at your service.”
“You are an American cruiser, I presume?” continued Captain Staunton, looking first at the beautifully kept decks, and then more doubtfully at the gang of desperadoes who crowded round.
“Sorter,” briefly replied the man who had called himself Johnson; and the reply seemed for some reason to mightily tickle his crew, most of whom burst into a hearty guffaw.
Captain Staunton glanced round upon them with such stern surprise that the fellows fell back a pace or two; and the skipper of the brig, first darting a furious glance upon his followers, led the way aft to the cabin, saying—
“I sorter waited breakfast when I made out through the glass that you were a shipwrecked crew, calculatin’ that prob’ly you’d be glad to find yourselves in front of a good square meal. Your crew will have to make themselves at home in the fo’ks’le; and if my lads don’t treat ’em properly, why they must just knock ’em down. My people are a trifle orkard to deal with at first, but I guess they’ll all pull together first-rate arter a while.”
Chapter Ten.
Captain Johnson explains himself.
The cabin of the Albatross was a much larger apartment than one would have expected to find in a craft of her size. It was about twenty feet long and eighteen feet broad, occupying the entire width of the ship; the state-rooms—of which there were two only—being outside the cabin, at the foot of the companion staircase. The apartment was well lighted and very airy, light and air being admitted not only through the skylight, but also through the stern-ports and dead-lights fitted into the sides of the ship. The fittings were extremely rich, though somewhat out of harmony with each other, conveying to Captain Staunton’s educated eye the idea that they had been collected at odd times from a number of other ships. The rudder-case, for example, was inclosed in a piece of elaborate carved and gilded work representing the trunk and branches of a palm-tree; but it had apparently been found too large, and the sections had accordingly been cut down to make them fit, the result being that the carving did not match at the junctions. The trunk of the tree had also been cut off rather clumsily at the base and fitted badly to the cabin floor, while the branches had been cut through in places where the beams crossed the ceiling, and had been nailed on again in such a way as to make them look as though they had grown through the beams. Then again the cushions to the lockers were of different sizes, colours, and materials, some being of velvet and others of horsehair, and every one of them from one to three sizes too large. The sides of the cabin were divided into panels by carved and gilded pilasters, which exhibited in a very marked degree the same incongruity, the eight pilasters in the cabin exhibiting no less than three different patterns. Some half a dozen pictures, one or two of which were really valuable paintings, were securely hung in the panels; and the stern-windows were fitted with handsome lace curtains, much too large for the position which they occupied. Two very handsome swinging lamps, of different designs, were suspended from the beams; a tell-tale compass and a ship’s barometer occupied respectively the fore and after ends of the skylight; and the bulkhead which formed the fore end of the cabin was fitted above the sideboard with racks in which reposed six repeating rifles; the panels which were unoccupied by pictures being filled in with trophies of stars and other fanciful devices formed with pistols, daggers, and cutlasses.