“We had one of our men a martyr, Mr. Stukeley. He tried to have a bit
of ‘fun,’ as you call it, with one of the Samballoes women. Lemuel
Bath his name was. They caught him, as it happened. And they done to
him what they do to each other, if they try any ‘fun’ and get caught.
That was ashore on the Main at the back of Sasardi there. I was ashore
the next day, filling water at the ’Seniqua. We seen Bath come
crippling down the beach, with his head back, and his hands tearing
his chest all bloody. Tearing his chest into strips with pain. Naked,
too. He died that evening. No, sir. Don’t you try it.”
“Thanks. Niggers aren’t in my line. I leave them to pirates.”
“That’s you. It’s time I was on deck, Mr. Stukeley. Adios, señor.
Divertiete. That’s what we used to say to the Spaniards when their
ransoms were paid.” He nodded to the head which watched him from the
bunk. Turning on his heel, he passed from the cabin, pressing his
thumb upon his pipe to kill the ember in the bowl. “I wonder if
there’s many like him,” he said to himself. “I wonder what it is makes
him like that. I’d like him in a watch. Oh, mommer.” As he muttered
thus, in passing to the deck, Stukeley turned in his bunk, drawing the
curtain. “Hulking boor,” he said to himself. “Hulking old savage. This
is the sort of company we keep when we come to sea. Crusty he gets,
when you bait him.” He thought of the little golden city and of the
little brown women, with resolve to try them both. “Good luck,” he
said; “I hope we’ll soon get out of here, before Olivia’s nerves go
off again.” As he settled himself down for his nap he was roused by a
noise in the sample-room, where Mr. Harthop broke in a caskhead with a
tomahawk. He went to the alleyway-door to call down the passage to
Margaret’s cabin.
“Margaret,” he cried, “can’t you stop that beastly noise for a bit?
Olivia’s lying down.”
“I am sorry,” said Margaret, coming from his cabin. “I ought to
have---- Mr. Harthop, will you please unhead your casks on deck? The
noise upsets Mrs. Stukeley. Apologize for me, Stukeley.”
The noise ceased, and Stukeley slept like an infant, showing his
strong white teeth in a smile. Harthop muttered and swore, wishing
that a ship with a woman in her might sail the rivers of hell; for
that was all she was fit for. He reproved the man who was working with
him for suggesting the tomahawk. The man sulked and loafed for the
rest of the afternoon, and then told a sympathetic fo’c’s’le that you
got your head bit off if that pale judy in the cabin heard you so much
as “hem.” Harthop, nursing his wrath till knock-off time, took it out
of the boy who kept his cabin clean.
“Can’t you find some other place to stow your brass-rags, without
putting them under my mattress?”
“Please, sir, they’re not the brass-rags. They’re the rags you stuff
in the leaky seam, sir. In wet weather, sir.”
“My bed’s no place for them, you dirty young hound. What have you done
with the molasses that was left?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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