“Well, well, we won’t argue the point,” replied Captain Billings, laughing. “I will say you both had a hand in it, if that’ll suit you better; but now, to end the controversy, you can go and turn in to your old bunk, as I intend keeping the first watch till we’re safe on our right track again.”
To hear was to obey, although, before I left the poop, the Esmeralda having got well away from the perilous rocks that had nearly been her ruin, I had the satisfaction of seeing her hauled round again up to the wind, with her head pointing south, thus resuming her proper course towards Cape Horn—only now with a more southerly pitch, sailing close-handed on the port tack.
Towards four bells in the morning watch we achieved the wonderful nautical feat of “Crossing the Line,” and, as I was on deck at the time, interviewing Pat Doolan in order to coax some coffee out of him, the Irish cook had a joke or two at my expense, under the plea of christening me on my entrance into Neptune’s rightful “territory”—if that term be not a Hibernian bull, considering the said territory is supposed to lie below the sea!
It was only our thirty-third day out, and some of the hands were congratulating themselves on our having got so far on our journey, many vessels knocking about the equator when within reach of it for days frequently before they can accomplish the passage.
“Be jabers!” said Doolan, “I call to mind once whin I was goin’ from Noo Yark to Australy in a schooner with a cargo o’ mules—”
“Lor’, here’s a bender coming now!” interrupted one of the crew with a laugh.
“Whisht, now!” ejaculated the cook indignantly. “Sure an’ it’s the trooth I’m tell’n ye, an’ niver a lie! Whin I were a goin’ to Australy in this here schooner, we kept dancing about hereabouts till a lot ov them blessed mules died, an’ in coorse we hove ’em overboard as soon as they turned up their toes.”
“That’s a good un!” put in Jorrocks, who was standing by. “This is the fust time I ever heard tell of a mule having toes!”
“Well, hooves thin, if you likes them betther,” said Pat, a little upset by this correction. “But, as I was a sayin’ when this omahdaun here took the word out ov me mouth, unlike the raal gintleman he ginerally is—”
“Stow that flummery,” cried Jorrocks, putting his hands before his face, under pretence of blushing at the compliment; but Doolan took no notice of him further, proceeding with his yarn.