The carpenter came and stood close to me, watching Johnson. I dare say he expected I would ask him why he had injured the boat; but I hardly dared trust myself to speak to him, so great was my passion and abhorrence of the wretch whose motive in rendering this boat useless was, of course, that we should not be able to save ourselves by her when we found the ship sinking.
When Johnson had done, some men came aft, and they went to work to provision the remaining quarter-boat, passing bags of bread, tins of preserved meat, kegs of water, and stores of that description, from hand to hand, until the boat held about a quarter as much again as she was fit to carry.
In the mean time, others were busy in the long-boat, getting her fit for sailing with a spare top-gallant stun'-sail boom and top-gallant stun'-sail, looking to the oars and thole-pins and so forth.
The morning passed rapidly, the crew as busy as bees, smoking to a man, and bandying coarse jokes with one another, and uttering loud laughs as they worked.
The carpenter never once addressed me. He ran about the decks, squirting tobacco-juice everywhere, superintending the work that was going forward, and manifesting great excitement, with not a few displays of bad temper.
A little before noon, when I made ready to take the sun's altitude, the men at work about the long-boat suspended their occupation to watch me, and Stevens drew aft, and came snuffling about my heels.
When I sang out eight bells, and went below to work out my observations, he followed me into the cabin, and stood looking on. The ignorance of his distrust was almost ludicrous; I believe he thought I should work out a false reckoning if he were not by, but that his watching would prevent me from making two and two five.
"Now, Mr. Royle," said he, seeing me put down my pencil; "where are we?"
I unrolled the chart upon the table, and drew a line down a rule from the highly imaginary point to which I had brought the ship at noon on the preceding day, to latitude 29°, longitude 74° 30'. "Here is our position at the present moment," I said, pointing to the mark on the chart.
"This here is Floridy, ain't it?" he demanded, outlining the coast with his dirty thumb.