“Wine-shops! that will do just as well, and perhaps a little better,” chuckled Bill. “There is no fun where there are no wine or beer shops.”
“What’s the use of talking?” demanded Bark Lingall. “What are the wine or the beer shops to do with us? If we entered one of them, we should be deprived of our liberty, or be put into the brig for twenty-four hours; and that don’t pay.”
“But I want to break away from this thing altogether,” added Bill Stout. “I have been a slave from the first moment I came into the squadron. I never was used to being tied up to every hour and minute in the day. A fellow can’t move without being watched. What they call recreation is as solemn as a prayer-meeting.”
“Well, what do you want to do, Bill?” asked Ben Pardee, as he glanced at the second master, who had halted in his walk in the waist, to overhear, if he could, any word that might be dropped by the party.
“That’s more than I am able to say just at this minute,” replied Bill, pausing till the officer of the watch had moved on. “I want to end this dog’s life, and be my own master once more. I want to get out of this vessel, and out of the fleet.”
“Would you like to get into the steamer?” asked Lon Gibbs.
“I should like that for a short time; but I don’t think I should be satisfied in her for more than a week or two. It was just my luck, when I got out of the Young America, after she went to the bottom, to have the American Prince come to take her place, and leave me out in the cold. No, I don’t want to stay in the steamer; but I should like to be in her a few days, just to see how things are done. All the fellows have to keep strained up in her, even more than in the Tritonia; and that is just the thing I don’t like. In fact, it is just the thing I won’t stand much longer.”
“What are you going to do about it? How are you going to help yourself?” inquired Lon Gibbs. “Here we are, and here we must stay. It is all nonsense to think of such a thing as running away.”
“I want some sort of an excitement, and I’m going to have it too, if I am sent home in some ship-of-war in irons.”