“Guess so,” replied Captain Snaggs. “Why?”
“’Cause I didn’t see thet precious nigger rascal, Sam Jedfoot. The stooard an’ thet swab of a Britisher boy ye fetched aboard at Liverpool wer thaar, sir, an’ every blessed soul on deck but thet lazy nigger.”
“’Deed, an’ so it wer, I guess,” said the captain musingly, as if to himself; and then he slipped back from the binnacle, where he had been talking to the first-mate, to his original position on the break of the poop, when, catching hold of the brass rail as before, he leant over and shouted forward at the pitch of his twangy voice; “Sam Jedfoot, ye durned nigger, ahoy thaar! Show a leg, or ye’ll lump it!”
Chapter Two.
“A Gen’leman ob Colour.”
“Thet swab of a Britisher boy,” so opprobriously designated by the first-mate as having been “fetched aboard at Liverpool” by the captain, as if he were the sweepings of the gutter, was really no less a personage, if I may be allowed to use that term, than myself, the narrator of the following strange story.
I happened, as luck would have it, to be standing just at his elbow when he made the remark, having come up the companion way from the cabin below the poop by the steward’s directions to tell Captain Snaggs that his dinner was ready; and, as may be imagined, I was mightily pleased with his complimentary language, although wondering that he gave me the credit of pulling and hauling with the others in taking in sail on ‘all hands’ being summoned, when every idler on board ship, as I had learnt in a previous voyage to New York and back, is supposed to help the rest of the crew; and so, of course, I lent my little aid too, doing as much as a boy could, as Mr Jefferson Flinders, the captain’s toady and fellow bully, although he only played second fiddle in that line when the skipper was on deck, could have seen for himself with half an eye.
Oh, yes, I heard what he said; and I believe he not only called me a ‘swab,’ but an ‘ugly’ one as well!