That night the Hawk weighed anchor and steamed unostentatiously out of Singapore Harbour without troubling the customs authorities or any other officials whatever.
CHAPTER III
MUTINY
By dawn the Hawk was churning her way at full speed towards the Java Sea and a destination unknown to any one but the Captain. It was too early to judge of the qualities of the ship, but those of the crew were already becoming manifest. Indeed, it looked as if the prophecies of the mate and the engineer were likely to be fulfilled sooner than even they expected. The men did not work with a will; worse still, they didn't even grumble. They maintained a solid, stolid, sullen silence that had the same effect on the nerves as a black and threatening cloud on a still day. They quarrelled amongst themselves, but for the officers they only had lowering glances and threats muttered below the breath. One would imagine that they had all been shanghaied or shipped under false pretences. Besides the boatswain, his mate and a couple of quartermasters, there were very few white men amongst them, and between these and the rest of the crew a state of hostility already existed.
When the boatswain's mate put his head inside the forecastle door to call the morning watch no one swore at him, and that was a very bad sign indeed.
"Now then, my sons, and you know the sons I mean! Show a leg, show a leg, show a leg!" he called.
Nobody threw a boot at him, nobody consigned him to the nether regions, nobody told him what his mother had been. The men tumbled out of their bunks with surly, glowering faces and with scarcely a word spoken.
"Rouse out! Rouse out! You hang-dog, half-caste, loafing swine!" roared the boatswain's mate, hoping that he might thus goad them into cheerfulness and induce a homely feeling.
He failed, however, and though one man made a tentative movement with his hand in the direction of a sheath-knife at his hip, nothing came of it.