I had great difficulty in repressing an emotion of nausea on witnessing this revolting mode of punishment; but, plucking up courage, I began to look about me, with the resolution of confronting and grappling with my evil destiny, and of taking means, by fire, water, or bloodshed—I cared not which, for I had grown desperate—of escaping on the first opportunity.
CHAPTER XVII.
JACK THE MARINE.
There were no boats towing astern; all were, as I have said, on board, and at each tack the cutter was generally put about a mile or more distant from the land, on each side of the Firth. Even if I could have dropped from the side unseen, and escaped the fire of small arms that would certainly salute a fugitive from the watch on deck, I doubted my being able to swim so far as the shore. Moreover, I might only be able to make a part of the coast where inaccessible rocks rose sheer from the water. But as the night was coming on, and cloudily too, my heart began to lighten with a hope which was doomed to be crushed, when Mr. Cranky, at nine o'clock, after the night-watch was set, ordered all the pressed men below. He was too old a sailor not to know the tricks they were apt to play under favour of the darkness when a ship was near the shore. So we were all driven down like sheep into a fold. The lower-deck, about the ballast-port, was crowded by the strongest men, who, as the atmosphere of such a place in June was excessively hot, crept close to it, to inhale the freshening breeze that came into the estuary from the German Sea, while I was glad to content me by creeping close to the bulkhead-grating, outside which a sentinel was always posted.
He proved to be a marine, and hearing me moaning and communing with myself till he became tired, he looked through the grating and said, surlily,—
"Silence there, youngster; we've had enough of this nursery nonsense! All that take on as you do are sure to tumble off the yards in the first puff of wind, or to be knocked on the head in the first action. It aint lucky, not a bit; so haul in your slack while you can."
"I am sorry I disturb you," said I meekly.
"You seem a better sort of boy," resumed the marine; "far better than the roughs we get aboard this precious tub of a tender," he added, surveying me by the dim light of his horn lantern; "here, taste my flip, will you? it has just come piping hot from the cook's galley."
"Thank you," said I, taking a good draught from the can of hot ale and egg which he handed to me through the grating.
"That is better than a pull at the scuttlebutt, youngster," said he kindly.