“Well, Bill did as he was told, and after a bit he managed to shove two or three of the crew through the scuttle on to the deck. They stood blinkin’ in the light like owls, rolling up against one another with their hair over their faces, and their clothes looking as if they had been put on upside down.
“‘Now, then! now, then!’ sings out the mate, who couldn’t keep his legs without holding on; ‘what’s the meaning of this here dissipation? There’s no drink allowed aboard this tidy little ship. There’s nothing but the teetotal lay to be found in this handsome hooker. Milk and water, my bully sailor lads! that’s the tap if ever ye want to end as philosophers. Loose the fore-topmast staysail. Loose the spanker. Get the main-topmast staysail on her. Lay out, some one, and loose the inner jib.’ And he rattled order after order as though he’d got a ship’s company of fifty men to do his bidding.
“How the drunken fellows scraped through the job I’m sure I don’t know. It was a bad look-out for us two sober men, but for the life of me I couldn’t help laughing to watch the sailors Bill had managed to shove on deck go aloft. Talk of hanging on with your eyelids! Again and again I expected to see ’em all drop overboard; but I suppose their instincts for holding on were there, though their senses were gone, and the same mental henergy it was, no doubt, as enabled them to get the gaskets adrift and loose the lower topsails. When those sails were sheeted home—the jib, staysails, and spanker being already set—the drunken men refused to do any more work; they rolled over to the scuttle and disappeared, the mate looking on, but too intoxicated to act. The skipper all this while never showed himself. I asked the mate what course I was to steer.
“‘Course?’ said he; ‘why, keep the vessel’s head followin’ the jibboom, can’t ye?’
“‘Easy enough,’ says I; ‘but where’s the jibboom a-going?’
“‘No impudence!’ he cries out. ‘Smother me if I know what the British sailor’s a-coming to. It’s all drink and jaw nowadays. What’s become of all the old, ’spectable, sober seamen?—tell me that, you terrapin.’
“There was no use arguing with a man who couldn’t stand without holding on. I says, ‘I’m not going to steer this barque all day—’specially as we seem bound to nowheres. My trick was up and out a long spell since.’
“‘And d’ye think,’ says he, ‘the vessel don’t know her way without you? Hook it forrard, afore I skin yer.’
“I let go the wheel and walked forward. I looked behind me as I went, making sure that he’d take my place. But the deuce a bit. He was leaning against the rail, and shook his fist at me when I turned my head, and there was the barque without any one steering her, her fore and aft canvas full, but her topsails aback, and her whole company, saving two, so drunk as to be incapable. It was a good job that old Drainings was not so drunk as the others, otherwise we should have been obliged to light the galley fire and get ourselves supper. We were not disposed to take this job upon ourselves, so we hauled him on deck and gave him several buckets of water, which appeared to wash some of the fumes out of his intellects, and he then turned to—in a very staggering fashion, sartinly—and got us some tea, being scared by our threats to drown him out of hand if he didn’t tend to our wants.
“Me and my mate hung about the deck forrard watching to see if the skipper showed himself, but he never appeared, which, taken along with the condition of the mate, made us suppose he was drunk too; but we couldn’t have swore to this without getting a sight of him first. I says to Bill, ‘Here’s a pretty look-out. What’s to be done? No one at the wheel; no one in charge; everybody drunk, and the night coming along.’