That morning, Martin, in the course of his duty, boarded a vessel moored near Wapping which he had already visited several times, and where he had established friendly relations with the cook.
“Two quarterns to-day, and mind they’re not stale,” said the cook.
“We never have any stale; our bread sells like hot cakes,” said Martin.
“Well, there’s a new customer for you astern there.”
The cook pointed to a vessel at anchor a few cables’ lengths down the river.
“Why, isn’t that the Portugal ship that was repairing at Deptford?” Martin asked.
“Ay, that’s her. She came up out of the yard on the tide yesterday.”
“I saw her in the yard not long ago. She’s had her mainmast shot away by the French, they said.”
“True, that was the yarn. She’s a queer sort of vessel, by all accounts. The crew are all black-haired men, but that you’d expect, being Portugals or Levantines, or summat outlandish. What’s queer is that they’re never allowed leave on shore. Even in Deptford, when the ship was being overhauled, they had to sling their hammocks in an old warehouse on the riverside. They was marched about like a lot of prisoners—conveyed there and back by the officers—and a dark-looking lot they are too.
“The captain’s a white man—white, says I, meaning he’s not a nigger, for his face is the colour of beer, and his hair as black as coal, and his beard like a horse’s mane. And it’s well his crew are foreigners, for true-born Englishmen wouldn’t stand that sort of treatment; there’d be mutiny aboard, trust me. But there’s no proper spirit in those Portugals; I don’t call ’em men.”