“Belay there, you boys,” he shouted down the hatchway. “Ye’re to return on deck!”
In obedience to this order, we ascended the ladder-way again, retracing our steps at an even slower pace than we had gone down at; for we both expected, the same thought having flashed across our minds when the ‘Jaunty’ hailed us, that Lieutenant Robinson had, on more mature consideration, fancied he had let us off too lightly for the heinous offence we had committed, and had ordered us to be brought back to give us ‘four dozen’ apiece at least, there and then!
The result, however, was very different to our sad anticipations; for when we reached the deck the old commodore was standing by the poop rail, close to the ladder on the port side leading down from thence into the waist of the ship.
Chapter Seventeen.
A Study in Black and White.
“Lieutenant Robinson,” said he to our persecutor, who looked ill at ease as he stood before him, the sextant which he had snatched up in a hurry to calculate the angle of distance of the whale and its antagonists now hanging listlessly in his hand, “be good enough, sir, to tell those boys that they may remain on the upper deck and look over the side, but that they must not stand on the hammock nettings. I like discipline to be preserved on board the ship I may have the honour to command, but I never allow any unnecessary severity being shown to the men or boys of the ship’s company!”
Much against his will, the lieutenant, thus rebuked on the quarter-deck in the presence not only of his own brother-officers, but in that of all of us on the deck below as well, had now to ‘eat humble pie’ and give us the commodore’s message; and, though Mick and I could not repress a grin on his bowing to us with mock politeness, we could see from the look in his underhung eyes that he intended to pay us out bye-and-bye when he had the chance for having been obliged to beg our pardon, as he had to do almost then.
Unhappily, though, the permission for us to look over the side again came too late; for the thrasher and the swordfish had been too much for the poor whale, whose huge lifeless body was now floating away to leeward, half a cable’s length astern of the ship, surrounded by an eddy of bloody water, while its assailants had both disappeared.