At last he said—
"It's Fish and two others as chose New Orleans. I have no fancy for them half-an'-half places. What I wanted was to get away into the Gulf of Guinea, and coast along down to Congo, or that way. I know that coast, but I never was in Amerikey, and," he added, fetching the chart a blow with his fist, "curse me if I like the notion of going there."
"It won't do to be shifting about," said I, frightened that he would go and get the crew to agree with him to run down to the African coast, which would seriously prolong the journey, and end, for all I could tell, in defeating my scheme; "we shall be running short of water and eatable stores, and then we shall be in a fix. Make up your mind, Mr. Stevens, to the Florida coast; you can't do better. We shall fetch it in a few days, and once ashore, we can disperse in parties, and each party can tell their own yarn if they are asked questions."
"Well, I'll talk to Fish and the others about it," he growled, going back to his seat. "I think you're right about them West Indie Islands. We must keep clear o' them. Perhaps some of 'em forrards may know what this here Florida is like. I was never ashore there."
He fell to his breakfast again, and finding him silent, and considering that enough had been said for the present, I left him.
I did not know how well I had argued the matter until that night, when he came to me on the poop, at half-past eight, and told me that the men were all agreed that it would be too dangerous to abandon the ship off New Orleans, and that they preferred the notion of leaving her off the Florida coast.
I asked him if I was to consider this point definitely settled, and on his answering in the affirmative, I sang out to the man at the wheel to keep her away a couple of points, and ordered some of the watch to haul in a bit on the weather braces, explaining to Stevens that his decision would bring our course a trifle more westerly.
I then told him that, with a good wind, I would give the ship eight or nine days to do the run in, and recommended him to let the crew know this, as they must now turn to and arrange, not only how they should leave the ship—in what condition, whether with their clothes and effects, as if they had had time to save them, or quite destitute, as though they had taken to the boats in a hurry—but also make up their minds as to the character of the story they should relate when they got ashore.
He answered that all this was settled, as, of course, I was very well aware; but then my reason for talking to him in this strain was to convince him that I had no suspicion of the diabolical project he was meditating against my life.
You will, perhaps, find it hard to believe that he and the others should be so ignorant of navigation as to be duped by my false reckonings and misstatements of distances. But I can aver from experience that merchant-seamen are, as a rule, as ignorant and thick-headed a body of men as any in this world—and scarcely a handful in every thousand with even a small acquaintance with the theoretical part of their calling. More than a knowledge of practical seamanship is not required from them; and how many are proficient even in this branch? Of every ship's company more than half always seem to be learning their business; furling badly, reefing badly, splicing, scraping, painting, cleaning badly; turning to lazily; slow up aloft, negligent, with an immense capacity of skulking.