Three days had passed since we left Galveston, and the only notable fact with regard to our navigation was, that, though we had lost sight of the land, we had made very little progress. There lay the vessel on the glassy shining sea, her sails flapping idly, but with now and then loud reports, against the masts. The captain was perfectly contented, and rather amiably-disposed towards me; for, as he sat in his little hot, stifling cabin—the atmosphere of which could not have been much under a hundred degrees—he sent his boy to ask me to come and liquor with him, and began to be very abusive when I declined the honour.
“That sneaking, white-haired, milksop of a Britisher—what business has he to refuse my civilities, I should like to know? It’s his natural pride, I guess, but I’ll pull it down a peg or two before I’ve done with him, I guess,” I heard him muttering as I sat reading on deck near the skylight under the shade of the mainsail.
He continued to drink and growl on, and as he got more and more drunk, he confused me with Snag, and abused both of us. From the language he occasionally used, and one or two expressions he let fall, I suspected that the unhappy man had fallen from a higher position in society to that which he now occupied. Now he quoted a line of Latin or Greek, and now he spoke in some Oriental language, Hindostanee or Arabic, I fancied, and swore in it fiercely, and then gave way to fits of idiotic laughter. Yes, I was certain that man had ranked as a gentleman, and now in appearance and manners he was the veriest brute under the sun.
“That’s what drink has done for him,” I said to myself: “or crime, and then drink to drown conscience; or probably drink produced the crime, and then, instead of repentance, came the more drink, that he might try and forget the crime. I am not in a pleasant position with the companionship of a set of ruffians. However, I have been in many a scrape before, and have got out of them. I hope that I may get out of this as well as I have done out of others.”
As the day grew on, however, I became more anxious. The heat increased until it became almost unnatural and utterly insupportable, and the sky assumed a lurid, brazen hue, which struck me as indicative of an approaching hurricane, or a gale of some sort. I observed the seamen casting anxious glances every now and then at the horizon, but no move was made among them to do anything; the mate was below asleep, and the master was too drunk by this time to know whether the sky was copper-colour, black, or blue, or to care what might become of the ship and all on board.
At last, having thought over all the descriptions I had read of hurricanes, I myself began to grow uneasy, and resolved to summon the mate, though I knew that I ran the risk of a quarrel in consequence. I put my head down the companion-hatch, and called out his name two or three times. The stifling air which came up from below made me unwilling to descend. The mate did not reply. He must be sleeping very soundly, I thought, or else he does not choose to answer. Peter, finding he did not appear, without my leave sprang down below, saying, as he did so, “I’ll rouse him up a bit, sir.”
“I say, mate—Mister Snag—wake up, will you? Wake up, Mister Snag,” I heard him sing out.
There was no reply for a minute, and then came a cry of pain and terror, and poor Peter reappeared faster than he had gone down, with an expression of alarm on his countenance, followed by the mate, who had a thick colt in his hand, with which he was accustomed to belabour any of the crew who offended him.
“For what you make all dat row?” he exclaimed fiercely, turning to me with a threatening gesture.
“To wake you up, and remind you of your duty,” I answered, in as calm a tone as I could command. “Look out there; what do you say to that sky?”