To Hislop and me he presented each a pair of handsome brass-barrelled Spanish pistols, and from the governor we received each a valuable diamond ring; but Marc was quite the lion of the cabin passengers during the remainder of the voyage.
Fra Anselmo was greatly surprised by the extent of his scholarship and varied knowledge, which far exceeded the acquirements of most young seamen; but Hislop, who was a modest fellow, considered them as quite a matter of course, education being so generally diffused in his country.
Among our men, when any point was in dispute, it was common to hear them say,—
"Ask Master Hislop, he knows every thing."
"Of course he does," added Tattooed Tom, one day; "blowed if I didn't hear him beat that Portuguese friar all to nothing at talking in three different lingoes the other afternoon."
"Indeed, Tom, I am very far from knowing every thing," answered Hislop; "I am only a hard-working seaman like yourself; but I have picked up some knowledge of different matters. You must know many a thing that I don't know, for even the greatest men in the world can only learn a part of what can be known, and thus, at times, are as ignorant as those poor Lascars. But I have to thank my good mother at home, in old Scotland, for sparing nothing on me when a boy, and since then I have made myself,—as any man, indeed, who has the will may do."
And it seemed to me that there was much sound sense in what the Scotchman said.
On the morning, after the extinction of the mutiny, we came to anchor a league to the northward of Warrang, for what reason I know not unless it was that the wind blew hard and the land was on our lee.
It was my trick at the helm (as the two hours usually allotted to that duty are named), and when, for the purpose of stopping the ship's way, and bringing her head to the wind, and making the canvas shake prior to furling up, Manuel Gautier sang out in Spanish,—
"Timonero, luff and touch her!" I did not understand him, and nearly had the wheel twitched out of my hands.