This was just the proposition I was about to make; so I went into the cuddy and sang out for the steward, but he was so long answering that I lost my temper and ran into the pantry, where I found him shamming to be asleep.
I started him on to his legs and had him on the main-deck in less time than he could have asked what the matter was.
"Look here!" I cried, "if you don't turn to and help us all to save our lives, I'll just send you adrift in that quarter-boat with the planks out of her bottom! What do you mean by pretending to be asleep when I sing out to you?"
And after abusing him for some time to let him know that I would have no skulking, and that if his life were worth having he must save it himself, for we were not going to do his work and our own as well, I bid him lay hold of one of the pump-handles, and we all three of us set to work to pump the ship.
If this were not the heaviest job we had yet performed, it was the most tiring; but we plied our arms steadily and perseveringly, taking every now and then a spell of rest, and shifting our posts so as to vary our postures; and after pumping I scarcely know how long, the pumps sucked, whereat the boatswain and I cheered heartily.
"Now, sir," said the boatswain, as we entered the cuddy to refresh ourselves with a drain of brandy and water after our heavy exertions, "we know that the ship's dry, leastways, starting from the ship's bottom; if the well's sounded agin at half-past ten—its now half-past nine—that 'll be time enough to find out if anything's gone wrong."
"How about the watches? We're all adrift again. Here's Cornish at the wheel, and its your watch on deck."
As I said this, Miss Robertson came out of the cabin where her father lay—do what I might I could not induce her to keep away from the old man's body—and approaching us slowly asked why we had been pumping.
"Why, ma'm," replied the boatswain, "it's always usual to pump the water out o' wessels. On dry ships it's done sometimes in the mornin' watch, and t'others they pumps in the first dog watch. All accordin'. Some wessels as they calls colliers require pumpin' all day long; and the Heagle, which was the fust wessel as I went to sea in, warn't the only Geordie as required pumpin' not only all day long but all night long as well. Every wessel has her own custom, but it's a werry dry ship indeed as don't want pumpin' wunce a day."
"I was afraid," she said, "when I heard the clanking of the pumps that water was coming into the ship."