“A Round Robin is not a thing to be criticised,” said I. “No man is supposed to have had a particular share in the manufacture of it. If you want me to praise this Round Robin I shall suppose you the author of it.”
“Dot vhas right, but still I ox,” said he, in his deep voice, slouching his cap to scratch his head, “vere could her laughter be?”
“You have the captain’s message,” said I, “and you will repeat it to the men.”
I then took another leisurely look round, and returned to my berth, my pipe, and my book.
At eight bells in the afternoon watch, the trade wind blowing freshly on the quarter, the sea running in dark blue heights with the frequent sparkle of silver flying fish at the coppered forefoot of the brig, and the sun sliding moist and warm and misty amid the breaks in the clouds southwest, Yan Bol, coming out of the caboose, where no doubt he had been smoking a pipe in company with the cook, who was a Dutchman, Hals by name, stood upon the forecastle, and putting his whistle to his lips blew a piercing summons, which, methought, found an echo in the very hollow of the distant little main royal itself, and then, opening his mouth, he delivered, in a voice of thunder, an order to all hands to lay aft.
The men were awaiting this command; they did not need to be urged aft. I had noticed the impatience with which they followed the chiming of the bell denoting the passage of time in ship fashion. On board the Black Watch we kept our little bell telling the hours and the half-hours as punctually as though we had been a ship-of-war.
The crew came swiftly and gathered abaft the mainmast, whence the quarter-deck went clear to the taffrail. Greaves had been on deck for above half-an-hour past, and I had been watching the ship since noon. No man can look so expectant as a sailor. He it is who above all men reaches to the highest possibilities of expression in the shape of expectation—that is to say, when at sea, when some weeks of shipboard are between him and the land he has left; when the full spirit of the monotony of the life possesses him, and when a very little thing becomes a very great thing merely because there is very little indeed of anything.
I had some difficulty to hold my countenance when I looked at the crew. They were going to hear a secret; it was a time of prodigious excitement, and every face was shaped by rough sensations and feelings. Greaves was smoking a long paper cigar; he flung what remained of it overboard, and with a glance behind him, as though calculating the distance of the man at the helm, that the fellow might hear what was said, he approached the sailors.
“I received the Round Robin, men,” said he, “and I read it. You want to know where this brig is bound to? I don’t blame ye. Mind,” he added, wagging his forefinger kindly at them, “I don’t blame ye. But you will remember, my lads, that when you agreed with me for the round voyage, whether at London or at Amsterdam, it was understood as a part of our compact that nothing was to be said about the destination of this brig until we were south of the equator.”
“Dot vhas right enough, sir,” said Yan Bol, “ve all say yaw to dot.”