"You insolent scoundrel!—who milked my cow last night?"— "The Lord in heaven knows, your honour. Who could it be, sir, without it was the ghost who has laid that poor lad in his sick hammock?"
"And I suppose that the ghost ordered you to hand the milk to the young gentlemen when he had done?"—"Me, sir! Heaven save me! I never se'ed a ghost in my life."
"Hypocrite! the bottle you sold the midshipmen!"—"One, your honour, I brought from Antigua, and which I overlooked yesterday."
"I shall not overlook it when I get you to the gangway. Go, Mr. Littlejohn, give orders to beat to quarters the moment the men have had their time."
All that forenoon the captain kept officers and men exercising the great guns, running them in and out, pointing them here and there;—sail-trimmers aloft—boarders on the starboard bow—firemen down in the fore-hold: the men had not a moment's respite, nor the officers either. How potently in their hearts they d—d the cow, even from the tips of her horns unto the tuft at the end of her tail! Five secret resolves were made to poison her that hard-worked morning. Mr. Small Jack, who was stationed at the foremost main-deck guns near her, gave her a kick every time the order came from the quarter-deck to ram home wad and shot.
Well, this sweltering work, under a tropical sun, proceeded till noon, the captain alternately swearing at the officers for want of energy, and exclaiming to himself indignantly, "D—them! how dare they milk my cow! There must be several concerned. Send the carpenter aft. Mr. Wedge, rig both the chain-pumps,—turn the water on in the well. Waisters! man the pumps. Where's that Grummet? Boatswain's mates, out with your colts and lay them over the shoulders of any man that shirks his duty; keep a sharp eye on the captain of the waist."
And thus the poor fellows had, for a finish to their morning's labour, a half-hour of the most overpowering exertion to which you can set mortal man,—that of working at the chain-pumps. When Mr. Littlejohn saw elderly Joseph Grummet stripped to the waist, the perspiration streaming down him in bucket-fulls, and panting as it were for his very life, he, the said Small Jack, very rightly opined that no milk would be forthcoming next morning.
At noon the men were as usual piped to dinner, with an excellent appetite for their pork and pease, and a thirsty relish for their grog; for which blessings they had the cow alone to thank. They were very ungrateful.
No sooner was the hour of dinner over than the captain all of a sudden discovered that his ship's company were not smart enough in reefing topsails. So at it they went, racing up and down the rigging, tricing up and laying out, lowering away and hoisting, until six bells, three o'clock, when the angry and hungry captain went to his dinner. He had made himself more unpopular in that day than any other commander in the fleet.
The dinner was unsocial enough. When a man is not satisfied with himself, it is rarely that he is satisfied with any body else. Now the whole ship's company, officers as well as men, were divided into parties, and into only two, respecting this affair of the cow; one believed in a supernatural, the other in a roguish agency; in numbers they were about equal, so that the captain stood in the pleasant predicament of being looked upon in a sinful light by one half of his crew, and in a ludicrous one by the other.