I will not attempt to follow the hours of that day. They were little more than a repetition of our experiences in the Anine. The Captain came and went, but for the most part Helga and I remained in the cabin. The gale somewhat moderated at noon, as the skipper had predicted; but it still blew too hard to make sail on the ship, and she lay hove-to in the trough, sickening me to the inmost recesses of my soul with her extravagant somersaults and prodigious falls and upheavals. Somewhere about half-past four that afternoon, on looking through the cuddy-window, I saw Jacob smoking a pipe in the shelter of the projection of the Captain's and mate's cabins. I thought I would keep him company, and, having cut up a pipe of tobacco for myself, I quitted Helga, who showed a disposition to doze, and joined the boatman.
The wind made a great howling aloft, and the thunderous wash of the breaking waters against the vessel's side put a wild note of storm into the shrieking and hissing and hooting of the rigging. But it was fairly calm in the recess, and we conversed very easily. I asked Jacob, while I pointed over the lee-rail at the huge, dark-green, froth-laced backs of the seas rushing from the ship in headlong race, what would be his thoughts of this weather if he were aboard the Early Morn.
'Why, the lugger 'ud be doing as well as this here bucket, any way,' said he.
'Captain Bunting,' said I, 'will think that you are not half grateful enough for your deliverance.'
'He is a proper gentleman!' he exclaimed. 'Abraham swears there ain't the likes of him afloat for politeness; but his crew ben't of Abey's mind, I'm afraid. Looks to me as if there's going to be trouble.'
'Anything fresh happened?' I asked.
'It's all along of this matter of sarving out pork to them chaps as won't eat it, Mr. Tregarthen. The mate gave 'em pork again to-day. There ain't no galley fire alight, so it's all the same to them coloured chaps whether it be pork or beef. But it's the principle of it what's a-sticking in their gizzards. Nakier says to me, "It would be allee de same if de water boil," says he, "for it is eider pork or no meat," by which he sinnified that if so be as it was fine weather and the galley fire goin', the men's dinner to-day 'ud be pork or nothen. Now, Mr. Tregarthen, Oi allow that they don't mean to keep all on enduring of this here treatment.'
'What have you noticed to make you suppose this?' said I, with a glance along the deserted decks, dark with sobbing wet, and often shrouded forwards by vast showers of flying spray.
'Well,' he answered, 'all the darkies has been a-sitting below saving the chap at the wheel, there being nothen for them to do on deck. I was in the fok'sle when Nakier comes down and tells the men that it was to be pork again. I couldn't understand him, for he spoke his own language, but guessed what was up when I heerd the hullabaloo his words raised. They all began to sing out together in a sort of screeching voice like the row made by a crowd of women a-quarrelling and a-pulling the hair out of each other's heads up a halley. Some skipped about in their rage as though there was a fiddle going. One chap, him with a face like a decayed lemon, he outs with his knife and falls a-stabbing of the atmosphere; and Oi tell ye, Mr. Tregarthen, when I saw that I just drawed my legs up into my bunk and tried to make myself as little as possible, with the hope of escaping his hobservation, for damme! thought I, if that there article's agoing to run amuck, as I've heerd tell the likes of him is in the habit of doing, strike me dark, thinks Oi, if I ben't the fust man he'll fall foul on!'
'What was said?' I asked.