Captain Miles used to come up regularly on the poop at noon to take the sun, from a sense of duty; but it was almost a useless task, as we hardly varied a mile in our position from the commencement of the calm, the vessel remaining close in with the fiftieth parallel of longitude and in latitude thirty-two North.
Mr Marline liked to chaff the captain about this, telling him that his sextant wanted polishing up a bit and that the glasses were wrong. However, that all went for nothing with his chief, who well knew where the fault lay, fully understanding that the instrument was not to blame; but, as regularly as he brought out the sextant he used to laugh at Mr Marline’s stereotyped joke.
As related in Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner”:—
“Day after day, day after day
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean!”
Had it not been for the two darkeys, Jake and Cuffee, I don’t know what we should have done for fun.
These comical fellows were a constant source of amusement to us; for, although they did not come to fisticuffs again, they were always quarrelling and making friends afterwards in the oddest way possible. Their disputes usually arose from some little trifle concerning their order of precedence, each being highly jealous of his dignity, and resenting in a moment any fancied slight or want of proper respect on the part of the other.
When Jake came on board in the summary way in which he “took his passage” at the beginning of our voyage, of course he had no wardrobe, or anything to wear save what he stood up in when he emerged dripping from the sea after the capsize of the boat in which he had come off to the ship. Captain Miles, however, had given him some cast-off slops, and the hands forward had also rigged him out from their chests, so that in a short time he made a very presentable appearance. This was especially the case on Sunday’s, when his dress was most conspicuous, Master Jake being something of a dandy like most negroes, and anxious to take the shine out of his fellows.
Somehow or other Cuffee the cook got jealous of this feature in his brother darkey’s character.
On week-days he did not mind submitting to any slight superiority Jake might have over him in his sailor-like rig; but one Sunday the latter donned an old blue coat that had been presented to him by Mr Marline. It was ornamented with brilliant brass buttons, and the effect was completed by a bright bandana handkerchief which he had begged from me, and this, contrasting with a white shirt and duck trousers, made his toilet so thoroughly effective that Cuffee was greatly aggrieved.
“You tink youself one fine gen’leman now, I s’pose?” he said, with a snort of indignation, when Jake went down into the waist in all this grand array after prayers on the poop. “Fine fedders make fine birds, yah, yah!”