He was again deluged with salt water; and greater severities were about to be practised upon him, as some of the Tritons cried for "the ghost of Roberts to come out of the sea;" others, to "smoke him, by putting his head in the hood of the cook's funnel," when Weston ransomed him for two bottles of brandy, and he was permitted to slink away to his bunk, breathing vengeance against all his tormentors.
Grog was again served round, the deck was cleared for a dance, and the crew footed the hours away in a succession of hornpipes, while the grim Cubano lay growling in the forecastle. Three cheers for the Captain, and three more for Marc Hislop, terminated the fun, and all but the watch retired below.
"They have gone too far with that fellow, as some of us may discover before the voyage comes to a close," said Hislop, when we were having a parting glass in the cabin.
"Yes," replied Weston; "he is a dark dog, and though I am not very rich, I would give a hundred pounds to fathom the mystery of old Robert's disappearance. Well, here's to our wives and sweethearts at home."
"I have neither sweetheart nor wife," said Hislop, as he tossed off his glass; "but I have a poor old mother who loves me as well as either could do."
Weston's eye wandered to the portraits of his wife and child, to whom he was tenderly attached, and for whom all his savings, by salary, tonnage, and hat-money,* were carefully hoarded; for whom, poor fellow, he tempted the dangers of the great deep, the war of the elements, and endured the hardships of a sailor's life—his wife, his little one, and their home—"his all; his sheet-anchor in this world, and his guide to the next," as I once heard him say, forcibly and strangely.
* Primage, or "hat-money," is a small allowance paid to the master of a vessel for the care he takes of the goods with which she is laden.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE CUBANO UNMASKED.
As we kept the coast of South America well aboard, a few days after we saw Cape San Roque, or, as it is sometimes named, Point Pelinga, the north-eastern extremity of Brazil, rising from the blue water like a purple cloud. But it diminished to a low black streak on our weather quarter when the sun set, and we found ourselves ploughing the waves of the Southern Atlantic.