“All right, George. I will keep an eye on him to-morrow,” said the skipper. “Between you and me the Cuban party did not bring enough provisions aboard to run them on full allowance for the voyage. There was graft somewhere. But I’m hanged if they can steal any of my stores. We may need every pound of them. I will see to it that your galley isn’t raided. And if this big bucko Jiminez gets gay again, give him the tea-kettle and scald the black hide off him—understand?”
“Yes, suh, cap’n; I’ll parboil him if you’ll look out he don’t carve me when he’s done recuperated.”
The cook descended to his realm of pots and pans while Captain O’Shea reflected that the voyage might be even livelier than he had anticipated. With calm weather his forty passengers would recover their appetites and demand three meals per day. They might whine and grumble over the shortage, but without a leader they were fairly harmless.
“I will have to lock horns with the big nigger before he gets any more headway,” soliloquized Captain O’Shea.
For once he heartily desired high winds and rough seas, but the following morning brought weather so much smoother, that the pangs of hunger took hold of the reviving patriots, who arose from the coal-sacks and crowded to the galley windows. The cook toiled with one eye warily lifted lest the formidable negro from Colombia should board him unawares.
Captain O’Shea leaned over the rail of his bridge and surveyed the scene. Black Jiminez was making loud complaint in his guttural Spanish patois, but his following was not eager to encounter the rough-and-tumble deck-hands of the Fearless, besides which the prudent cook hovered within easy distance of the steaming tea-kettle.
To the amusement of Captain O’Shea, it was that lathy sharp-shooter of the serious countenance, Jack Gorham, who took it upon himself to read the riot act to the big negro. He regarded himself and his duty with a profound, unshaken gravity. Jiminez overtopped him by a foot, but pride of race and self-respect would not permit him to knuckle under to the black bully.
“Will ye look at the Gorham man?” said Captain O’Shea to the chief engineer who had joined him. “He is bristlin’ up to the nigger like a terrier pup. And Jiminez would make no more than two bites of him.”
“How can the soldier do anything else?” exclaimed Johnny Kent. “He’s the only white man in the bunch.”
“I may as well let him know that I am backin’ his game,” observed the other. He sang out to Gorham, and the veteran infantryman climbed to the bridge, where he stood with heels together, hat in hand. His pensive, freckled countenance failed to respond to the captain’s greeting smile.