This was the smashing of one of our pumps from a round shot, the splinters from which were stuck into the bottom of the launch, which overhung it, forming really a figure very like the letter A.
“Don’t take it to myself, Tom—no, not at all.”
At this moment the black savages on the forecastle discovered our friend, and shouts of “Sheik Cocoloo” rent the skies. Mr Bang, for a moment, appeared startled, so far as I could judge, he had forgotten that part of his exploit, and did not know what to make of it, until at last the actual meaning seemed to flash on him, when, with a shout of laughter, he bolted in through the opening of the flags to his former quarters below the awning. I descended to the cabin, breakfast having been announced, and sat down to our meal, confronted by Paul Gelid and Pepperpot Wagtail. Presently we heard Aaron sing out, the small skuttle being right overhead, “Pegtop, come here, Pegtop, I say, help me on with my neckcloth—so—that will do; now I shall go on deck. Why, Pearl, my boy, what do you want?” and before Pearl could get a word in, Aaron continued, “I say, Pearl, go to the other end of the ship, and tell your Coromantee friends that it is all a humbug that I am not the Sultan Cocoloo; farther more, that I have not a feather in my tail like a palm branch, of the truth of which I offer to give them ocular proof.”
Pearl made his salaam. “Oh, sir, I fear that we must not say too much on that subject; we have not irons for one half of them savage negirs;” the fellow was as black as a coal himself; “and were they to be undeceived, why, reduced as our crew is, they might at any time rise on, and massacre the whole watch.”
“The devil!” we could hear friend Aaron say; “oh, then, go forward, and assure them that I am a bigger ostrich than ever, and I shall astonish them presently, take my word for it. Pegtop, come here, you scoundrel,” he continued; “I say, Pegtop, get me out my uniform coat,”—our friend was a captain of Jamaica militia—“so—and my sword—that will do—and here, pull off my trowsers it will be more classical to perambulate in my shirt, in case it really be necessary to persuade them that the palm branch was all a figure of speech. Now, my hat—there—walk before me, and fan me with the top of that herring barrel.”
This was a lid of one of the wadding-tubs, which, to come up to Jigmaree’s notions of neatness, had been fitted with covers, and forth stumped Bang, preceded by Pegtop doing the honours. But the instant he appeared from beneath the flags, the same wild shout arose from the captive slaves forward, and such of them as were not fettered, immediately began to bundle and tumble round our friend, rubbing their flat noses and woolly heads all over him, and taking hold of the hem of his garment, whereby his personal decency was so seriously periled, that, after an unavailing attempt to shake them off, he fairly bolted, and ran for shelter, once more, under the awning, amidst the suppressed mirth of the whole crew, Aaron himself laughing louder than any of them all the while. “I say, Tom, and fellow sufferers,” quoth he, after he had run to earth under the awning, and looking down the scuttle into the cabin where we were at breakfast, “how am I to get into the cabin? if I go out on the quarterdeck but one arm’s length, in order to reach the companion, these barbarians will be at me again. Ah, I see.”
Whereupon, without more ado, he stuck his legs down through the small hatch right over the breakfast table, with the intention of descending, and the first thing he accomplished, was to pop his foot into a large dish of scalding hominy, or hasty-pudding, made of Indian corn meal, with which Wagtail was in the habit of commencing his stowage at breakfast. But this proving too hot for comfort, he instantly drew it out, and in his attempt to reascend, he stuck his bespattered toe into Paul Gelid’s mouth. “Oh! oh!” exclaimed Paul, while little Wagtail lay back laughing like to die; but the next instant Bang gave another struggle, or wallop, like a pelloch in shoal-water, whereby Pepperpot borrowed a good kick on the side of the head, and down came the Great Ostrich, Aaron Bang, but without any feather in his tail, as I can avouch, slap upon the table, smashing cups and saucers, and hominy, and devil knows what all, to pieces, as he floundered on the board. This was so absurd, that we were all obliged to give uncontrolled course to our mirth for a minute or two, when, making the best of the wreck, we contrived to breakfast in tolerable comfort.
Soon after the meal was finished, a light air enabled us once more to lie our course, and we gradually crept to the northward, until twelve o’clock in the forenoon, after which time it fell calm again. I went down to the cabin; Bang had been overhauling my small library, when a shelf gave way (the whole affair having been injured by a round shot in the action, which had tom right through the cabin), so down came several scrolls, rolled up, and covered with brown paper.
“What are all these?” I could hear our friend say. “They are my logs,” said I.
“Your what?”