“Call all hands to liquor up, sirree. It ain’t every day, I reckon, we gits round the Horn!”
A wild cheer burst from the men, who had clustered in the waist in response to this summons; and the good news of getting round the Cape and having a double allowance of grog proving too much for the majority, the rest of the day was spent in a sort of a grand jollification, the skipper and first-mate ‘carrying on’ in the cabin, while the crew made themselves merry in the fo’c’s’le, whither an extra bottle or two of rum had been smuggled, having been got out of the steward by the expeditive of a little ‘palm oil’ and wheedling in about equal proportions.
I think I may say, without exaggeration, that, with the exception of Jan Steenbock, the second-mate, who showed himself a regular steady fellow all through the voyage, Tom Bullover, and lastly, though by no means least, myself, there was not a single sober man on board the ship that evening, all being more or less under the influence of liquor, from the steward Morris Jones—who, mean Welshman that he was, seemed never loth to drink at any one else’s expense—up to Captain Snaggs, who, from being ‘jolly’ at ‘eight bells,’ became still more excited from renewed applications of rum by midnight; until, at length, early in the middle watch, he rushed out on deck from the cuddy absolutely mad drunk.
He was in a state of wild delirium, and his revolver, ready cocked, was in his hand.
“Snakes an’ alligators!” he yelled out, levelling the weapon at the mainmast, which he mistook for a figure in the half-light of morning, which was just then beginning to break. “I’ve got ye at last, ye durned nigger. Take thet, an’ thet!”
Quick as lightning one report followed another, the bullets coming whistling by the galley where I was standing.
Jan Steenbock, who was on the poop, hearing the crack of a revolver, called out something; whereupon Captain Snaggs turned round and aimed his next shot at him, although, fortunately, it missed the second-mate, on account of Jan dodging behind the companion hatchway just in the nick of time.
The captain then made a bound at the poop ladder, and rushed up the steps swearing awfully; and, first firing at the man at the wheel, whose arm the bullet penetrated, as soon as he gained the poop, he dived down the companion in pursuit of Jan Steenbock, who had disappeared below the booby hatch.
For the next five minutes or more, the ship was in a state of the wildest confusion, the skipper chasing everyone he could see, and all trying to get out of his way, as he dashed after them in his frenzy, rushing, in a sort of desperate game of ‘catch who catch can,’ from the cabin out on to the maindeck, and then up the poop ladder and down the companion into the cuddy again, the second-mate, the steward, and first-mate alike being assailed in turn, and each flying for life before the frantic madman. At last, just as the captain emerged from the cabin for the third time, in hot haste after the steward, the other two having succeeded in concealing themselves, Morris Jones stumbled against a coil of rope by the mainmast bitts, and, his toe at the same time catching in a ring bolt, he sprawled his length on the deck.
“Good Lord!” cried the unfortunate steward, panting out the words with his failing breath. “I’m a dead man! I’m a dead man!”