There is really no other word in the English language to express the meaning of the ejaculative sound he made, which signified, equally, acquiescence, approval, disapproval, or anything.
It was now midnight.
The captain, Tom and Charley, and one of the English hands who acted as steward, were down below asleep aft, and three English sailors and four Greeks were supposed to be in the same somnolent condition in the foc’s’le; and, on deck, were the first mate and four more Englishmen, one of whom was on duty as lookout forward, and another taking his turn at the wheel; while four of the foreigners and the remaining two British seamen lounged about the waist, or stood grouped around the mainmast-bitts amidships, attentive to the orders of the officer of the watch, who, being not in the best of tempers, as usual, did not let them long remain idle for a spell.
That was the situation when the first mate called out, after glancing at his watch, to “make it eight bells;” and almost at the same moment the lookout man forward sang out lustily, in a voice that rang through the ship, “Land ho!”
Whether it was the sound of the ship’s bell that gave the signal, evidently preconcerted beforehand, or the cry that land was in sight, only the Greek sailors knew; but, at all events, it roused them in a second to action, for with a fierce cry the four foreigners who were amidships rushed on the two Englishmen that shared their watch, drawing their knives and stabbing them desperately as they fell upon them.
“Murder! Help!” sang out the poor Jack tars; but, though caught unawares, they made a hard fight for their lives, one, a north-countryman, although stabbed in several places, snatching up a capstan bar and braining the Greek nearest him like a bullock.
At the same time, the four other Greeks who were down below in the forecastle and supposed to be sleeping, crept up the hatchway forward, slipping on the
cover as they got on deck, and went to the assistance of their companions, who, being thus reinforced, made short work of the two Englishmen, who presently sank senseless on the deck which was weltering with their gore, and then rushed aft in a body, brandishing their knives and shouting like demons.
Mr Tompkins showed himself the coward he was, as Tom had anticipated; for, after hammering on the top of the cabin skylight to rouse those below, with a belaying pin he had grasped hold of at the sight of the struggle in the waist, he incontinently scuttled up the mizzen shrouds, displaying an agility of which one would have never thought him capable. The steersman followed his example; while the lookout man forward, hearing the yells and groans of his comrades, and seeing what was up, took refuge in the foretop, thus leaving the seven remaining Greeks, one or two of whom had suffered in the fray, practically masters of the ship, which was yawing about like a drunken man, and backing and filling as she veered this way and that without any guidance or control, nobody being at the helm.