I cannot say it was a pleasant cruise, though it brought unexpected promotion to one of the Shamrock three. In this wise:
The mate was a wicked brute, neither more nor less. I do not want to get into the sailor fashion of using strong terms about trifles, but to call him less than wicked would be to insult goodness, and if brutality makes a brute, he was brute enough in all conscience! Being short-handed at Bermuda, we had shipped a wretched little cabin-boy of Portuguese extraction, who was a native of Demerara, and glad to work his passage there, and the mate’s systematic ill-treatment of this poor lad was not less of a torture to us than to Pedro himself, so agonizing was it to see, and not dare to interfere; all we could do was to aid him to the best of our power on the sly.
The captain, though a sneaking, unprincipled kind of man, was neither so brutal nor, unfortunately, so good a seaman as the mate; and the consequence of this was, that the mate was practically the master, and indulged his Snuffy-like passion for cruelty with impunity, and with a double edge. For, as he was well aware, in ill-treating Pedro he made us suffer, and we were all helpless alike.
His hold over the captain was not from superior seamanship alone. The Water-Lily was nominally a “temperance” vessel, but in our case this only meant that no rum was issued to the crew. In the captain’s cabin there was plenty of “liquor,” and the captain occasionally got drunk, and each time that he
did so, the influence of the mate seemed riveted firmer than before. Crews are often divided in their allegiance, but the crew of the Water-Lily were of one mind. From the oldest to the youngest we all detested the mate, and a natural manliness of feeling made us like the captain better than we ought otherwise have done, because (especially as regards the drinking) we considered his relations with the mate to be characterized by anything but “fair play.” No love was really lost between them, and if the captain came on deck and took the lead, they were almost certain to quarrel (and none the less so, that we rushed with alacrity to obey the captain’s orders, whereas with the mate’s it was all “dragging work,” as nearly as we dare show unwillingness).
What led to the extraordinary scene I am about to relate, I do not quite know. I suppose a mixture of things. Alister’s minute, unbroken study of what was now his profession, the “almost monotonous” (so Dennis said) perseverance with which he improved every opportunity, and absorbed all experience and information on the subject of seamanship, could hardly escape the notice of any intelligent captain. Our captain was not much of a seaman, but he was a cute trader, and knew “a good article” in any line. The Scotch boy was soon a better sailor than the mate, which will be the less surprising, when one remembers
how few men in any trade give more than about a third of their real powers to their work—and Alister gave all his. This, and the knowledge that he was supported by the public opinion of a small but able-bodied crew, may have screwed the captain’s courage to the sticking-point, or the mate may have pushed matters just too far; what happened was this:
The captain and the mate had a worse quarrel than usual, after which the mate rope’s-ended poor Pedro till the lad lost consciousness, and whilst I was comforting him below, the brute fumed up and down deck like a hyena (“sight o’ blood all same as drink to the likes of him,” said Alfonso, “make he drunk for more”)—and vented some of his rage in abuse of the captain, such as we had often heard, but which no one had ever ventured to report. On this occasion Alfonso did report it. As I have said, I only knew results.
At eight o’clock next morning all hands were called aft.
The captain was quite sober, and he made very short work of it. He told us briefly and plainly that the mate was mate no longer, and asked if we had any wish as to his successor, who would be chosen from the crew. We left the matter in his hands, as he probably expected, on which, beckoning to Alister, he said, “Then I select Alister Auchterlay. He has