I soon learned, beside all the above about Argentina’s coast trade, that Tugg kept his seamen at work through fear. He never changed his drawl in speaking; but when he gave an order there was a grimness about his mouth and a flash in his gray-blue eyes that gave one a cold, creepy feeling in the region of the spine. I don’t know that Captain Tugg went armed. But if an order had been neglected by any man aboard I had the feeling that a weapon would appear in the skipper’s hand and that the mutineer would have dropped in his tracks!
Pedro, the mate, was a snaky, dusky fellow, with huge rings of gold in his ears and a smile that showed altogether too many teeth to be pleasant—a regular alligator smile. As far as I could see, I would just as lief have Pedro’s ill feeling as his friendship. Yet Tugg trusted him implicitly. But I—I locked my stateroom door whenever I lay down to sleep; and I kept the Winchester and the Colts revolver loaded all the time. Perhaps I was foolish; but I felt that we were in a state of war.
The routine duties of the schooner kept me at work, however, for I tried to earn my sixteen a month. Tugg was a good navigator himself. He handled his schooner like a professional yachtsman. Captain Rogers would have admired the man, for he was another skipper who did not believe in lying hove to no matter how hard the wind blew. There was a week at a stretch when I didn’t get thoroughly dry between watches. The Sea Spell just about flew over the water instead of through it!
But a calm fell thereafter and we lay for eighteen hours in the Bay of St. George, the sails hanging dead with not a breath of wind, and the sea like glass. We were within two rifle shots of the shore at one point. Behind this point of rocks was an inlet and the pool made good anchorage without doubt, for there were several sail there, and a jumble of huts on the shore.
We had seen whales for several days and once passed a whaleship at work trying out; but it was not the Scarboro. Now a great whale swam calmly past the Sea Spell, nosing in toward the land, probably following some school of tiny fish upon which he was feeding.
“Wisht I had a crew of bully boys to go after that critter,” sighed Captain Tugg, behind his long cheroot. “He’ll make more’n a bucket o’ ile, you bet!”
“You wouldn’t want to litter up your tidy schooner with grease, sir,” said I, in wonder.
“Mebbe not; mebbe not. But money’s good wherever you find it, and that critter is wuth two or three thousand dollars. By the e-tar-nal snakes!” he added, using his favorite expletive, “I’d love to stick an iron in that carcass.”
I knew that Adoniram Tugg had been almost everything in the line of sea-going and was not surprised to find that he had driven the iron into many a whale. We stood swapping experiences, idly watching the big whale. The creature sounded and remained down twenty or thirty minutes. When he came up he spouted three times in quick succession, and then lay basking on the surface.
“Looker there!” exclaimed Captain Tugg, suddenly. “By the e-tar-nal snakes! looker there!”