The voice uttering this exclamation, which I at once recognised as that of Tom Bullover, the carpenter, came from amidst a mass of the men, who, attracted by the noise of the row, had gathered from forward, and were clustered together—as I could see sideways from my position there, spread-eagled in the rigging. They were standing by the long-boat, just abaft of poor Sam Jedfoot’s now tenantless galley, and immediately under the bellying folds of the mainsail, that rustled and swelled out over their heads, tugging at the boltropes and rattling the clew-garnet blocks, as it was jerked by the wind, which ever and anon blew with eddying gusts as it veered and shifted.
“Who’s the mutinous rascal thet spoke then?” cried Captain Snaggs, wheeling round on the instant, quick as lightning, and cocking his revolver with another ominous click, as he faced the group, aiming at the nearest man to him. “Jest ye give me another word of yer jaw, an’ I’ll sarve ye the same as I sarved thet durned nigger—I will so, by thunder!”
A hoarse murmur, partly of rage and partly expressive of fear, arose from the crew as they shuffled uneasily about the deck, one trying to get behind another; but neither Tom Bullover nor anyone else stepped out to answer the captain, who, seeing that he had cowed them, lowered his awkward looking weapon.
“Ye’re a pack of durned skallywags, with nary a one the pluck of a skunk in the lot!” he exclaimed contemptuously, in his snarling Yankee voice; but, just then, the head sails flapping, from the helmsman letting the ship nearly broach to, forgetting to attend to his duties in his eagerness to hear all that was going on, the captain’s wrath was directed towards those aft, and he wheeled round and swore at the second-mate, who was on the poop, leaning over the rail, bawling out louder than before:—“What the infernal dickens are ye about thaar, Mister Steenbock? Snakes an’ alligators! why, ye’ll have us all aback in another minute! Ease her off, ease her off gently; an’ hev thet lubber at the wheel relieved; d’ye haar? Ha ain’t worth a cuss! Get a man thet ken steer in his place. Jerusalem! Up with the helm at once!”
Fortunately, the jib only gybed, while the fore-topsail slatted a bit against the mast; and all the other sails remaining full and drawing, a slight shift of the helm sufficed to put the ship on her proper course. Still, the captain, now his blood was up, could not afford to lose such a good opportunity both for rating the second-mate for his carelessness in conning the ship and not making the helmsman keep her steady on her course, and also in giving a little extra work to the hands who had dared to murmur at his fearful vengeance on the cook for drugging his food. So he made them bustle about the deck in style, slacking off the lee braces and hauling upon these on the weather side, until we had brought the wind almost over the stern, with the yards pretty nearly square. We were now running before it, rolling from port to starboard and back again from starboard to port, almost gunwales under, with the sail we had on us now, for it was blowing a good ten-knot breeze from the nor’-nor’-west, the breeze having shifted again since sunset, right astern, instead of being dead ahead, as previously, of our proper tract for the open sea.
When Captain Snaggs had seen everything braced round, and the boom-sheet of the spanker likewise eased off, he turned to where I was still lashed up against the main shrouds, in dread expectancy every moment of his renewing the thrashing he had commenced, and which poor Sam’s plucky intervention on my behalf had for the time interrupted.
“Well, ye young cuss!” said the skipper, who had been giving all his orders from the lower deck, which he had not left since he had rolled out from the cuddy under the poop in the paroxysm of passion and pain that led to such a dread catastrophe—all that had happened, although it takes a long time to describe, having occurred within a very brief interval of his first outburst on me. “What hev ye got to say for y’rself thet I shouldn’t give ye a thunderin’ hidin’, sich ez I hanker arter, hey? I’m jiggered, too, if I don’t, ye young whelp! Fur I guess ye wer kinder in truck with thet durned nigger when he tried to pizen me an’ Mister Flinders. I’ll skin ye alive, though ye aren’t bigger nor a spritsail sheet knot, my joker, fur ye hevn’t got half enuff yet, I reckon!”
So saying, he picked up the rope’s-end that he had dropped when he took out his revolver, and was evidently about to lay it on my poor trembling back again, when another groan came from the men forward, who still hung about the windlass bitts, instead of going below after squaring the yards. Tom Bullover’s voice, I could hear, again taking the lead, as they advanced in a body aft, in a much more demonstrative manner than previously.
“Stow that now, and leave the boy alone,” I heard him say. “You’ve wallopped him already; and there’s been enough murder done in the ship!”
Captain Snaggs let fall the cat he had taken in his hand to thrash me with, and once more pulled out from his pocket the revolver; but, in the half-light that lingered now after the sunset glow had faded out of the sky, I noticed, as I screwed my neck round, looking to see what he was doing, that his hand trembled. The next moment he dropped the revolver on the deck as he had done the rope’s-end.