Up rushed the carpenter in a very short time, rather the worse, I thought, for the dose he had swallowed.
"What's the matter! What the devil is all this?" he bellowed, lurching from side to side as the ship rolled, for we were now broadside on.
"The bo'sun has fallen overboard!" I shouted in his ear; and I had need to shout, for the din of the canvas was deafening.
"Do you say the bo'sun?" he bawled.
"Yes. What shall we do? is it too dark to pick him up?"
"Of course it is!" he cried, hoarse as a raven. "What do you want to do? He's drownded by this time! Who's to find him? Give 'em the proper orders, Mr. Royle!" and he vociferated to the men—"Do you want the masts to carry away? Do you want to be overhauled by the fust wessel as comes this road, and hanged, every mother's son of you, because the bo'sun's fallen overboard?"
I stood to leeward gazing at the water and uttering exclamations to show my concern and distress at the loss of the boatswain.
Stevens dragged me by the arm.
"Give 'em the proper orders, I tell ye, Mr. Royle!" he cried. "I say that the bo'sun's drownded, and that no stopping the wessel will save him. Sing out to the men, for the Lord's sake! Let her fill again, or we're damned!"
"Very well," I replied with a great air of reluctance, and I advanced to the poop-rail and delivered the necessary orders. By dint of flattening in the jib-sheets and checking the main-braces, and brailing up the spanker and rousing the foreyards well forward, I got the ship to pay off. The carpenter worked like a madman, bawling all the while that if the ship was dismasted all hands would certainly be hanged; and he so animated the men by his cries and entreaties, that more work was done by them in one quarter of an hour than they would have put into treble that time on any other occasion.