"Got all the hands to work, Mr. Gates?" he called down to the mate. "Aye, aye, sir!" replied Mr. Gates, knocking the heel of his boot on the deck to ease his aching toes. The captain ran his eye over the crew, who were huddling together forward of the bridge. He cleared his throat. "Now, you scum," he began genially, "attend to me, while I tell you what you've got to do on board this ship." The scum, stagnant and unresponsive, listened stolidly to his harangue, the substance of which did not differ materially, _mutatis mutandis_, from one of Mr. Squeers's inaugural addresses to his pupils on the first morning of term at Dotheboys Hall. Captain Kingdom's peroration laid particular stress upon the fact that Messrs. Gates and Dingle had been requested by him as a particular favour to adopt the policy of the thick stick and the big boot in the case of those members of the crew who refrained from looking slick in executing their orders. The crew received his remarks with sheepish grins or sullen scowls; and the orator concluded: "Pick watches, Mr. Gates, and then we'll pipe down to dinner. Are all hands on deck?" "Aye, aye, sir," replied Mr. Gates, looking over his list. "I saw _somebody_ down below a few minutes ago," drawled a voice, proceeding from a figure seated upon a bollard. It was Mr. Allerton, who, with characteristic contentment with (or indifference to) his lot, had performed the unprecedented feat of signing on for a second voyage in the Orinoco. He wore his usual air of humorous tolerance of the cares of this world, and spoke in the composed and unruffled fashion which stamps the high-caste Englishman all over the globe. His lot on board the Orinoco had been lighter than that of most, for his companions, finding him apparently impervious to ill-usage and philosophically genial under all circumstances, had agreed to regard him as a species of heavily decayed and slightly demented "dude," and had half-affectionately christened him "Percy,"--a term which sums up the typical Englishman for the New Yorker almost as vividly as "Rosbif" and "Godam" perform that office for the Parisian. The captain descended from the bridge, walked across the deck, and dispassionately kicked Mr. Allerton off the bollard. "Stand up, you swine, when you speak to me!" he shouted. "Where did you see anybody?" Mr. Allerton rose slowly and painfully from the scuppers. There are moments when the _rôle_ of a Democritus is difficult to sustain. "I'm sorry you did that, captain," he remarked, "because I know you didn't mean it personally. You had to make some sort of demonstration, of course, to put the fear of death into these new hands, but I regret that you should have singled me out as the _corpus vile_,--you don't know what that means, I daresay: never mind!--because you have shaken up my wits so much, besides nearly breaking my hip-bone, that I shall have to pause and consider a minute before I remember where I _did_ see the gentleman."