“ ‘I say, mates, there’s but one man which kin help us in this quandary—and that’s the new mate.’
“ ‘Why, Chips,’ said the cooper, ‘Lord love you, he’s hand and glove with him you knows of. ’Taint no manner of use of countin’ on him. He’d no more listen to our story than the old Turk at the paliss yonder. Besides, he’s used to sailin’ in other sort of crafts altogether, and sticks up his nose at us whalemen. He’s jist the same sort as the Jonas hisself, and they two is bound to stick togither this cruise—blow high, blow low—till wind and wave parts ’em.’
“ ‘Dat bin ’xactly my notion, too,’ said the black, ‘him too much an out-an-out sailor to go agin de captin.’
“ ‘Well, Bungs,’ answered the carpenter, ‘it’s many a long day since you’ve been to sea afore this cruise, and you speak accordin’ to your lights, I dare say. As to the doctor, why I can’t expect much better of him, seein’ that he’s not long out of the bonds o’ iniquity. (The cook was a runaway slave.) But, you see, I’ve talked the whole matter over with Browning, and Shadduck, and Frank, the man-o’-war’s-man, as stands for the whole o’ the starboard-watch—and says I to them, says I, what’s to come o’ it, my lads, s’posin’ we does get the ship out o’ this blessed mess—a ghost aft, the cholery, the Turks and the tiffoons—and the bloody skipper runs away with her, craft and cargo, after all—and leaves us in some foreign port to go to grass with the greenhorns.’
“ ‘Why, where on airth could he run her to, I want to know?” said the cooper. “If her invoice were drugs and spices, now—or teas and silks, as in her old days, you might talk; but, as I take it, old head, it would be hard to find a market in any quarter of the world, barrin’ Europe and the States, for sich a cargo of sparm ile as we’ve under hatches.’
“ ‘So you think, my lad,’ retorted the carpenter, coolly, ‘ ’cause, old as you are, you ar’n’t up to half the deviltry afloat now-a-days.’
“ ‘Mayhap, now, you ha’n’t forgot that old nob, with the powdered head and the long cue, which were as thick as three in a berth, with the skipper, at Pernambuke?’
“ ‘Lord love you, no, Charley,’ answered his crony. ‘I remembers him well enough, by reason of the half-doubloon which he give the boat’s crew for pickin’ up three of his niggers, when wild Frank capsized their canoe in the harbor.’
“ ‘Well, then,’ continued Charley, ‘Don Josey Maria were his name, and the richest senor he were, they said, between the Recife and the Rio.’
“ ‘Well, Chips, what then?’ asked the cooper.