Accordingly the piragua was speedily floating alongside the great ship, and, following Rumbold, as I may now call him, I clambered up the high sides. But what a sight did the deck present to me—a sailor hitherto accustomed to orderly vessels. Strewn everywhere about were great heaps of luggage and ship stores—trunks and mails mingled with coils of rope, and masses of sails—buckets, boat anchors, flags, handspikes, and what not—while, tumbled hither and thither in this chaos, sprawled more than a score of drunken seamen, some of them fast asleep and snoring, with empty bottles and glasses still grasped in their hands—others, still sitting up, babbling and singing, in maudlin fashion, over their liquor—or disputing fiercely with thickened speech and bloodshot eyes. The relics of a feast lay scattered over the decks, slippery with the wine and liquors spilt upon them. There were broken glasses and empty flasks, the smashed fragments of tobacco-pipes, divers dice-boxes, and packs of greasy cards. But the principal object on which my attention dwelt was the form of a stalwart, big-limbed sailor, who lay with his head resting on the knee of a man who was tending a hurt upon his temples. Looking more closely, I saw that the wounded man had received a desperate slash with a knife, which had laid open the side of his forehead and part of the cheek, narrowly missing the eye. From this gash the blood was pouring fast, while the surgeon, for such he was, who tended the wounded man, cleaned the ghastly cut, from time to time, with sponges dipped in hot water, while he prepared his instruments to sew it up. The patient was insensible, breathing hard and loud, and having his glazed eyes open, and gleaming with a wild, vacant stare. As I gazed, I immediately comprehended that it was the cry uttered by this man, as he was wounded, which had alarmed us in the piragua, and looking towards the bows, I saw a fellow, with his doublet-sleeve all bloody, being marched off in custody by a group of his comrades—all high in oath at the cowardly hound of a Portuguese, (as they called him,) who had used his knife instead of his fists in a quarrel among friends.