Meanwhile, the ship was in the wildest uproar which we had seen yet. The newly washed clothes had been hung in lines across the poop, and they were thrashing about like tattered flags; while ever and anon detached clothespins whistled by, necessitating very lively dodging. On the main-deck sixteen sailors were doing absolutely nothing but casting off the wrong braces; while ropes were flying, sails were slatting and booming, the bosuns were jumping about sulphurous with profanity, and Mr. Goggins in five minutes had so far lost command of himself as to lean helplessly against a capstan, quite speechless. Captain Scruggs stood at the weather poop-ladder shouting commands, to which no one paid any attention, such as, “Brace up those head-yards there; what’s the matter with you, Mr. What’s-your-name? Come out o’ that trance and git a watch-tackle on the foresheet. Hurry up that handy-billy now; or maybe you want me to show you what a handy-billy is.” (This with blighting sarcasm.) “Bosun, get that jib-topsail in!” The trumpeting of a rogue elephant couldn’t have been worse than the roar in which these orders were given, and the relief was infinite when objects began to straighten themselves out and the skipper went below. At seven o’clock we were doing eight knots, steering southwest by the wind. “The southeast Trades,” said the captain, positively; “they always come in a squall like that.” But, so far from this being the truth, the wind had let go entirely at eleven, and we were once more lying idly on a motionless sea. Latitude, 3° 50′ north; longitude, 29° 3′ west. +June 3+ Even Captain Scruggs’s proverbial good luck seems to have vanished, for we have not made more than fifty miles per diem for several days, usually drifting about all over the ocean without steerage-way, until a squall comes along every two hours or so and sends us ahead four or five miles. The skipper lately has kept his temper well for so intolerant a man, but it is now oozing rapidly away, and he rolls out a reverberating oath at the men every few minutes, at whom he rages for apparently nothing. He seems to think that the most laborious tasks ought to be accomplished instantaneously, and he stuns Jimmie Rumps now and then with something like, “I’ll learn yer to obey with the end of a rope, for yer can’t pull any more than somebody’s d---- cow”; and constantly asks him, “Ain’t yer got a mouth on yer to answer with?”