"Yep, and the grub. And they say the 'tween-deck and forecastle smells o' bedbugs and bilge-water, and they want their grog. 'An ungodly witness scorneth judgment: and the mouth of the wicked devoureth iniquity.'" Mr. Todd had been educated for the pulpit; but, going out as a missionary, he had fallen into ungodly ways and taken to the sea, where he was more successful. Many of his old phrasings clung to him.
"Well," drawled the captain, "men get fastidious and high-toned in this business,—can't blame them,—but we've got to make the coast, and if we don't pick up something on the way, we must careen and stop the leak. Then they'll have something to growl about."
"S'pose the brig follows us in?"
"Hope she will," said Captain Swarth, with a pleasant smile and a lightening of his eyes—"hope she will, and give me a chance. Her majestic widowship owes me a brig, and that's a fine one."
Mr. Todd had never been known to smile, but at this speech he lifted one eyebrow and turned his saturnine face full at his superior, inquiry written upon every line of it. Captain Swarth was musing, however, and said no more; so the mate, knowing better than to attempt probing his mind, swung his long figure down the poop-ladder, and went forward to harass the men—which, in their opinion, was all he was good for.
According to his mood, Mr. Todd's speech was choicest English or the cosmopolitan, technical slang of the sea, mingled with wonderful profanity. But one habit of his early days he never dropped: he wore, in the hottest weather, and in storm and battle, the black frock and choker of the clerical profession. Standing now with one foot on the fore-hatch, waving his long arms and objurgating the scowling men at the pumps, he might easily have seemed, to any one beyond the reach of his language, to be a clergyman exhorting them. Captain Swarth watched him with an amused look on his sunburnt face, and muttered: "Good man, every inch of him, but he can't handle men." Then he called him aft.
"Angel," he said, "we made a mistake in cutting the ports; we can't catch anything afloat that sees them, so we'll have to pass for a peaceable craft until we can drift close enough to board something. I think the brig'll be back this way, too. Get out some old tarpaulins and cover up the ports. Paint them, if you can, the color of the sides, and you might coil some lines over the rail, as though to dry. Then you can break out cargo and strike the guns down the main-hatch."
Three days later, with Cape St. Roque a black line to the westward, a round shot across her bows brought the old vessel—minus the black emblem now, and outwardly respectable—up to the wind, with maintopsail aback, while Captain Swarth and a dozen of his men—equally respectable in the nondescript rig of the merchant sailor—watched the approach of an English brig of war. Mr. Todd and the rest of the crew were below hatches with the guns.
The brig came down the wind like a graceful bird—a splendid craft, black, shiny, and shipshape, five guns to a side, brass-bound officers on her quarter-deck, blue-jackets darting about her white deck and up aloft, a homeward-bound pennant trailing from her main-truck, and at her gaff-end a British ensign as large as her mainroyal. Captain Swarth lazily hoisted the English flag to the bark's gaff, and, as the brig rounded to on his weather beam, he pointed to it; but his dark eyes sparkled enviously as he viewed the craft whose government's protection he appealed to.
"Bark ahoy!" came a voice through a trumpet. "What bark is that?"