The captain, for all answer, knocked him down with a crow-bar; at the same time he showed the crew the coast of England, which was faintly visible at a distance, as well as a man-of-war coming full sail towards them.
A day after this incident, the ship had landed her rebellious crew at Cardiff. The boatswain was sent to jail, where, if he had been a man of a philosophical turn of mind, he might have meditated on the difference between right and might.
As for Vranic, he was but too glad to quit a ship where he was hated by everybody, even by the captain, who had treated him more like a galley slave than a fellow-creature.
After having earned a pittance as a porter for a short time, he again embarked on board the Ave Maria, an Austrian ship bound for Marseilles. This ship had had a remarkably prosperous voyage from the Levant. The captain had received a handsome gratuity, and now a cargo had been taken at a very high freight; therefore, from the captain to the cabin-boy, every man on board was merry and worked with a good will.
Although the weather was bleak, rainy and foggy, still the wind blew steadily; moreover, the Ave Maria was a good ship, and a fast sailer, withal she laboured under a great disadvantage, that of being overladen, and was, consequently, always shipping heavy seas.
On leaving Cardiff, the captain found that two of the sailors, who had been indulging in excesses of every kind whilst on shore, were in a bad state of health. A third sickened a few days afterwards, and for a long time all three were quite unfit for work. Still, the ship managed to reach Marseilles without any mishap.
The cargo was unloaded, a fresh one was taken on board; the men received medical assistance, and seemed to be recovering. On leaving Marseilles, matters went from bad to worse; the captain, his mate, and two other sailors fell ill.
"It seems," said the captain, "as if someone has the gift of the evil eye, for, since we left England, ill-luck follows in our wake."
The crew was, therefore, greatly diminished, for the three men, who had been recovering, were now, on account of improper food and overwork, quite ill again.
On leaving Marseilles they met with heavy gales and baffling squalls of wind; the ship began to pitch heavily, then to labour and strain in such a way that, overladen as she was, the pestilence-stricken crew could hardly manage her. For three days the wind blew with such violence that two men had to be constantly kept at the helm. Moreover, she shipped so many seas that hands had to be always at the pumps. The very first day the waves had washed away the coops; then, at last, the jib-boom and the bowsprit shrouds had been broken loose and torn away by the grasp of the storm.