“I vhas to be second mate still?”
“Yaw, it is so, Yan. We want no better man.”
But the compliment was not relished. Methought Yan Bol, as he fronted the stormy western light, looked sterner and more beetle-browed, hairier, and more bearded than before, when he understood that he was to remain second mate.
“There are three Dutchmen aboard not counting you, Bol,” said the captain, “and seven Englishmen. I want such a distribution of watches, as will put the three Dutchmen under you, Yan. Wirtz, you and Hals will come out of the starboard into the larboard watch, and Meehan and Travers will take their place. That’s all I’ve got to say, excepting this—pipe for grog, Bol, to drink the health of the new mate.”
This dismissed them chuckling. Bol sounded his whistle, and Jimmy presently came out of the cabin and went forward with a can of black rum swinging in his hand.
“I am lumping the Dutchmen together under one head,” said Greaves, as we paced the deck, “to give their characters a chance of developing, before they learn the motive of this voyage. Not that I have more or less faith in Dutchmen than in Englishmen; but sailors of a nationality do not distrust one another, therefore whatever is bad will quickly ripen: but mix them with others and you arrest rapid development by misgiving; and a difficulty, that might come to a head quickly, is delayed until a remedy becomes difficult or impracticable.”
“I understand you, sir.” He smiled on my giving him the sir for the first time. “You want to get at the character of your crew as promptly as may be.”
“That I may clear my forecastle of whatever is doubtful. A cargo of five hundred and fifty thousand dollars makes a rich ship, and a rich ship is a wicked temptation to wicked men. It is a pity we could not manage with fewer hands; but death, sickness, many disabling causes are to be considered; the voyage is a long one—there is the Horn; we could not have done with less men.”
“I wonder what notion of this voyage the men have in their heads,” said I. “I watched them while you talked. I could not see that they made sign by grin, or stare, or look.”
“They would not be sailors if they were not careless of the future,” said Greaves. “What’s for dinner to-day? That’s it, you know. Is there a shot in the locker? Is there a drop of rum in the puncheon? Is there a fiddle aboard? and if the answer be yea, marry, a clear, strong, manly bass voice sings out, ‘All’s well.’ Those men don’t care, because they don’t think. Can’t you hear them talk, Fielding?—‘Where the blazes are we bound to, I wonder?—Hand us that pipe along for a draw and a spit, matey.’—‘I’m for the land o’ shoe-shine arter this job, bullies’—‘Der bork in dis schip vhas goodt,’ says a Dutchman. Then grunt goes another, and snore goes a third, and the rest is snorting. Don’t it run so, Fielding? You know sailors as well as I. But I’ll tell you what; it’ll put gunpowder into the heels of their imaginations, to learn that we’re going to load dollars out of a derelict. They shan’t know yet a bit. Well it is that Van Laar doesn’t know either. Tulp was for having me explain the nature of our errand to him. ‘No, by Isten,’ said I—which I believe is Hungarian—‘no, by Isten,’ I exclaimed, ‘no man shall know what business we’re upon till I have gained some knowledge of the character of the company of fellows who are under me.’”