“I tell you we did feel a bit melancholy and down in the dumps then, especially as all hands knew the errand on which the old ship had gone and felt that we were out of the fun! However, I did not give the men time to think of this too long; for, acting under the directions given me by the skipper, I steered the pinnace towards the coast to windward of the Comoro Islands, intending after dark to creep up under the lee of Saint Juan, where I’d been told the dhows mostly made for when the coast was clear; and, what with trimming the sails and making taut the sheets, as well as stationing a special look-out in the bows and one in the stern behind me at the helm, I soon managed to turn the men’s attention away from the Dolphin, though some of them still seemed chop-fallen, being new to boat cruising and not relishing the work.
“Of course, I knew in what a responsible position I was—almost like that of the captain of a ship; for, I could order the men to do anything I pleased, and if they disobeyed me have them tried for mutiny, while I had the right to attack and capture any native vessels I suspected of having slaves on board—so, soon after noon, when I piped all hands to dinner, I made them a little speech after the grub had been stowed away comfortably, pointing out that their circumstances were considerably better than they themselves appeared to think. In course, I said, our shipmates in the Dolphin had a bit the advantage of us in starting off on another chase, with perhaps the chance of a second scrimmage at the end of it, the same as we had all had together on the previous evening; but then, I says, what we were doing was equally for the good of the service; and, besides, as soon as the steamer had overhauled the slaver she was after she would have to go back to that beastly Zanzibar in the thick of fever time, remaining there probably for weeks, until she got rid of the slaves from the captured dhows, while, on the contrary, we would be down here cruising about on the free open sea and enjoying ourselves!
“We lost nothing by remaining there, I said. If our old ship took the slaver she was now chasing, why, we would share in the prize-money just the same as if we’d been on board her, without running the risk of any hard knocks or having some Arab’s dagger cutting daylight into us; and if she didn’t succeed in hunting down the dhow, which was more than likely, considering the long start the latter had got, why, then we would be well out of a wild-goose chase.
“In addition to such arguments,” continued Ben, who sometimes spoke with a purity of diction that is much more common amongst seamen of the navy of to-day than it was in “the good old days” of our ancestors before education was much in vogue, “I hinted that nobody could say we might not pick up a slave-dhow down there on our own hook quite as good as the other one we could not go after; and if not, well, at all events we would have an easier time of it than if we had been kept on board the ship! There, as they knew, the skipper took jolly good care to serve us out full purser’s allowance of drill if there was nothing else stirring; for it was beating to quarters, or small-arm exercise, or manning the big guns, and playing all such fancy tricks with us when he had no better work to keep us employed with between watches. I can tell you, I never saw such a hand as Cap’en Wilson for that. He used to say that the devil always found something for idle hands; and the way he went about remedying this reminded me of the old poetry lines I once heard a Yankee sailor call the ‘Philadelphia Catechism’—
“‘Six days shalt thou labour and do all thou art able,
And on the seventh,—holystone the decks and scrape the cable!’
“These words of mine had such an effect on the men that I assure you, sir, they grew quite cheerful like, chatting and laughing together as they lolled about on the thwarts under the boat awnings that were spread fore and aft I allowed them to take it easy, with the exception of the hands having charge of the sheets of the sails and those on the look-out, as I don’t think discipline is preserved any the better by keeping fellows continually on the stretch when there’s nothing particular to do, merely to see them slaving their hearts out.
“Presently, the look-out forward said he thought he saw the white sail of a dhow close in to the island we were beating to windward of; and of course every one immediately must take it for granted that she’s a contraband carrying slaves.”
“I suppose you didn’t undeceive them?” said I.
“Not I,” replied Ben. “I was only too glad of the chance. It banished at once all thoughts of the old Dolphin out of their heads better than all my palaver, for all hands were so anxious to come up with the strange craft that they themselves voted for taking to the oars, which I certainly wouldn’t have ordered their doing in the terrible afternoon heat, as, while we were having our dinner, the wind had been gradually dying until it was now almost a dead calm, and the sails flapping against the masts, with the boat rocking on the heavy rolling swell that you always meet with out there when the sun is at the meridian.”
“I thought you expected a tornado in the early morning?” I here suggested.