“Avast there, mate, an’ give us some coffee,” cried Tom, interrupting him at this point, and some others of the crew coming up at the moment, the conversation was not renewed, which I was not sorry for, Hiram’s talk about ghosts not being very cheerful.
During the day, as I’ve said, Captain Snaggs got better, and came on deck again, looking like himself, but very pale. His face, however, seemed to have become wonderfully thinner in such a short space of time, so thin indeed that he appeared to be all nose and beard, the two meeting each other in the middle, like a pair of nut-crackers!
He was much quieter, too, for he did not swear a bit, as he would have done before, at the man at the wheel, who, startled by his coming softly up the companion without previous notice, when he fancied he was lying in his cot, let the ship fall off so that she almost broached-to, in such a way as almost to carry her spars by the board!
No, he did not utter a single harsh word.
“Steady thaar!” was all he called out; “kip her full an’ by, an’ steer ez naar north ez ye ken!”
This was about the beginning of July, and we had from then bright weather, with westerly and nor’-west winds all the way up the Pacific, past the island of Juan Fernandez, which we saw like a haze of green in the distance.
After this, making to cross the Equator for the second time—our first time being in the Atlantic Doldrums—somewhere between the meridians 100 degrees to 102 degrees, we proceeded on steadily northward, picking up the south-east trade-winds in about latitude 20 degrees South, when nearly opposite Arica on the chart, although, of course, out of sight of land, being more than a couple of hundred leagues away from the nearest part of the coast.
In about twenty days’ time we got near the Equator, when we met with variable winds and calms, while a strong indraught sucked us out of our course into the Bay of Panama.
The temperature just then grew very hot, and the captain, taking to drinking again, soon recovered his spirits and his temper, which had latterly grown so smooth and equable that we hardly knew him for the same man.
In a short space, however, the rum fully restored him to his old quarrelsome self, and he and the first-mate, Mr Flinders, had an awful row one night, when the skipper threatened to send the mate forward and promote Jan Steenbock in his place. Captain Snaggs had never forgiven him for the cowardice and want of sailorly instinct he displayed at the time of the alarm of fire in the forepeak; and the fact also of Mr Flinders having lain for two days drunk in his bunk after their jollification on rounding Cape Horn, did not tend to impress the skipper any the more strongly in his favour.