“The fifth day about ten o’clock A.M. there comes up a tremendous thunder storm, and the waves run mountain high, and it blowed as though the heavens and arth was a comin’ together; and the wind and storm riz till two o’clock in the arternoon, and increased; and we drew an ile cloth over the hatch comin’s and companion way. And all the sails was took down, every rag on ’em, and we sailed under bare poles; and the log was flung out, and we found we was a runnin’ at the rate of fifteen knots an hour; and there come a sea and swept every thing fore and aft, and it took me, for I’d just come out of my caboose, and swept my feet right from under me, but I hung fast to the shrouds; and there wave arter wave beat agin us, and swept over us clean. And oh! dear me suz, the lightnin’ struck on the water and sissed like hot iron flung in, and the thunder crashed like a fallin’ mountain, and the sailors acted some on ’em pretty decent, and the rest on ’em like crazy folks. They ripped, and swore, and cussed, and tore distressedly; and one old feller up aloft reefin’ sail, his head was white as flax, cussed his Maker, ‘cause he didn’t send it harder.
“Oh! how I trembled when I heard him! Why he scart me a thousand times worse than the lightnin’. ‘Bout nine at night we tries the pumps, and finds three feet water in the bold, and then eight men went to pumpin’ till the pumps sucked, and the captain looked pretty serious I tell ye; and ’bout twelve o’ clock the storm went down, and all was quiet, only the sea, and that was distressedly angry; and the next mornin’ ’twas as calm, as the softest evenin’ ye ever see.
“Captain comes round and says, ‘boys, old Neptune will be round to-day, and make every one pay his bottle or be shaved,’ and sure enough, ’bout eleven the old feller comes aboard with an old tarpaulin hat on, and his jacket and breeches all tore to strings, and the water running off on him, and says, ‘captain you got any of my boys aboard?’ ‘Yis, here’s one;’ and he p’inted at me. ‘Well boy, what have you got for me to-day?’ ‘A bottle of wine,’ says I; and he says ‘now I’m goin’ to swear you by the crook of your elbow, and the break of the pump, that you will let no man pass without a bottle or a shave.’ So he goes round to all on board and then goes away. The captain told me he was ‘old Neptune, and lived in the ocean;’ but I was detarmined to foller him; so on I goes arter him, and I finds him snug hid under the cathead a changin’ his clothes, and then he comes on deck, and I charged him that he was the old Neptune, and finally he confessed it, and said ’twas the way all old sailors did to make every raw hand, when they got to sich a spot in the ocean, pay his bottle or be shaved with tar, soap, and an iron razor.
“Along in the day, captain calls all hands on deck, and says, ‘we’ve had a pretty hard time boys, and new we’ll rig a new caboose, and clear up, and then we’ll splice the main brace and ’twas done quick and well, for grog was ahead.
“The captain says to me, ‘now cook, you go down and draw that ten quart pail full of wine, and give every man a half a pint; and drink and be merry boys, but let no man get drunk. Well, I got a good supper, and arter that a jollier set of fellers you never seed. We was runnin’ under a stiff breeze from N. W. and all sails well filled; and we had sea stories, and songs, and music, and all kinds of amusements, and the captain was as jolly as any body.
“Well, arter bedtime, the captain says, ‘cook, you must be my watch to-night,’ and he comes and tells me jist how to manage the helm; and he turns in, and I managed it well, for I’d managed his old sloop on the river, but this was somethin’ more of a circumstance; and afore the watch was up, I got so I could manage a ship as well as the fattest on ’em, and a tickelder feller you never see.
“In the mornin’ the hands praised me up; and the captain says, ‘why, he’s the best man aboard, for he can do my duty;’ and that made me feel good, and I got two considerable feathers in my cap that time.
“But I must hurry on. We made St. Bartholomews in nineteen days from New York, and sold cargo, and took in a load for Porto Rico, and there filled up with sugar and molasses, and put out for New York. The climate there was hot enough to scorch all the wool off a nigger’s head. The fever was ragin’ dreadfully in another part of the island, and we didn’t, any on us, pretend to go ashore much. The sand was so hot at noon ‘twould burn your feet, and the white inhabitants didn’t go out at all in the middle of the day; but the niggers didn’t seem to mind the heat at all; bare-footed, bare-headed, and half-naked; yis, more’n halt a considerable, and it seemed the hotter it was the better they liked it. But they suffered a good deal, and they’d come aboard our ship and try to make thick with the crew. They talked a broken lingo, kind’a Ginney, I s’pose; and they called white folks ‘buddee,’ and they’d say, ‘buddee give eat, and I give buddee orange.’ And so at night, they’d fetch their oranges aboard, and give a heap on ’em for a few sea-biscuit, and I tell ye, them oranges wan’t slow. One night, five or six on ’em fetched a big sea turkle aboard, and we bought him and paid a kag of biscuit for him, and he weighed two hundred and seventy pounds, and the fellers seemed dreadfully rejoiced, and patted their lips and bellies, and laughed, and kissed the captain’s feet, and laughed and seemed tickled enough, and off they went. Next day another feller come aboard, and says, ‘Cappy, you buy fat pig?’ ‘Yis, and when will you bring him?’ ‘Mornin’ Cappy.’ So, in the mornin’ he come aboard with his pig; he was small, but terrible fat; and so the captain pays him and looks at him, and says, ‘Jack, your pig is small.’ ‘Oh! massa, he’s small, but dam old.’ Oh! how the captain laughed! and he used that for a bye-word all the v’yge.
“Well, we cooked the turkle, and sich meat I never see; there was all kinds on it, and if we didn’t live fat for some days I miss my guess. I was a goin’ to throw the shell overboard, but the captain hollered and stopped me, and so he saved it and sold it in New York for a good sight of money; and finally, arter bein’ in the islands some time, we weighed anchor for New York.
“We’d got ’bout half way home, and one day the cabin boy was aloft, and he cries out, ‘Sail ho!’