I climbed down and he clapped the hatch on again. I was in darkness except for the light that filtered from the cabin lamps through the four cracks of the hatch. When my eyes had become accustomed to the dimness, I made out that I was in the ship's run, where the provisions for the captain's table were stored. I rummaged about as well as I could in my handcuffs and found a sack of raisins open and a box of soda crackers. To these I helped myself generously. From a forecastle viewpoint they were rare dainties, and I filled my empty stomach with them. I had not tasted anything so good since I had my last piece of pie ashore. Pie! Dear me! One doesn't know how good it is—just common pie baked in a bakery and sold at the corner grocery—until one cannot get it and has had nothing but salt horse and cracker hash for months. I used to yearn for pie by day and dream of pie by night. At bedtime the captain snatched the hatch off again and tossed me down my blankets. I bundled up in them as best I could and slept with my manacles on.
I was kept in irons on bread and water for five days and nights. Sometimes in the daytime, with one handcuff unlocked and hanging from my other wrist, I was put at slushing down the main boom or washing paint-work. But for the most part I was held a close prisoner in the run, being called to the cabin table three times a day for my bread and water. Finally, when Captain Shorey came aboard and assumed command and the vessel headed for the north, I was released and sent to the forecastle. My shipmates proved Job's comforters and were filled with gloomy predictions regarding my future.
"I pity you from now on," each one said.
But their prophecies proved false. After Captain Shorey took charge of the ship Mr. Winchester became mate. As mate he was, as may be said, the ship's foreman, directing the work of the men, and was in much more intimate contact with the sailors than when he had been skipper. In his new capacity he had much greater opportunity to make it unpleasant for me in a thousand ways. But for some reason or other he never made good that ferocious speech he had delivered to me in the cabin.
When other green hands bungled, he damned them in round terms for their awkwardness. When I blundered he showed me how to correct my error. "Not that way, my boy," he would say. "Do it this way." When I took my trick at the wheel he would often spin a yarn or crack a joke with me. He loaned me books from time to time. In Behring Sea, when he got out his rifle and shot okchug seals as they lay basking on cakes of ice, he almost invariably took me with him in the boat to bring back the kill. In short, he treated me more considerately than he treated any other man in the forecastle and before the voyage was over we had become fast friends.
[CHAPTER IX]
THROUGH THE ROARING FORTIES
Before leaving the islands, we shipped a Portuguese negro boat-steerer to take the place of the Night King. He was coal black, had a wild roll to his eyes, an explosive, spluttering way of talking, looked strikingly like a great ape, and had little more than simian intelligence. His feet had the reputation of being the largest feet in the Hawaiian Islands. When I had seen them I was prepared to believe they were the largest in the world. He was dubbed "Big Foot" Louis, and the nickname stuck to him during the voyage. He came aboard barefooted. I don't know whether he could find any shoes in the islands big enough to fit him or not. Anyway, he didn't need shoes in the tropics.