I did not imagine, however, that the crew would long content themselves with what, while Greaves remained dumb, must be to them no more nor less than an aimless sailing over the breast of the ocean. Sailors do not love to be long at sea without making a voyage. Our crew might look at the compass and note that the course was a straight one for cutting the equator; but what imaginations were they to build up on the letters S.S.W.? We were not a king’s ship. There was no obligation of _passivity_. The sailors were merchant seamen, claiming all the old traditional rights of their calling; of exercising those rights, at all events, whenever convenient: the rights of grumbling, cursing, laying aft in a body and expostulating, holding forward in a body and turning deaf ears to the boatswain’s music. “Surely,” I would sometimes think, while I paced the deck, eyeing the fellows of my watch at work, “those men will not wait till we are south of the line to hear what the errand of this brig is!” It came to pass that, a few days after we had got rid of Van Laar, I went on deck at midnight to take charge of the brig until four in the morning. The noble wind of the northeast trade was full in our canvas--a small, fresh, quartering gale--the sky lively with the sliding of stars amid the steam-tinctured heap of the trade-cloud swarming away southwest. Studding-sails were out and the brig hummed through it, shouldering the seas off both bows into snowstorms. The burly figure of Yan Bol stood to windward, abreast of the little skylight. He waited for me to relieve him, and, while he waited, he sang to himself in a deep voice, like the drumming of the wind as it flashed into the hollow of the trysail and fled to leeward in a hollow roar under the boom. “Is that you, Bol?” “Yaw, it vhas her himself,” he answered. “This will do,” said I, stepping up to him. “Yaw, dis vhas a nice little draught,” he replied. I made a few quarter-deck inquiries relating to the business of the brig during his charge of the deck since eight o’clock, and was then going aft to look at the binnacle, but stayed on finding that he lingered. “Do you know,” said he, “I vhas not very gladt to be second mate.” “Why not?” “Vell, I believe dot der men vouldt hov more respect for me if I vhas one of demselves.” “But you are bo’sun, anyway, and your rating, therefore, is higher than that of the others.” “Dot may be,” he replied, “but a bo’sun in der merchant service vhas no better dan vhat you call in your language a common sailor. He blows a whistle; dot, and a dollar or two more money, and dere you hov der difference.” “Who else could be second mate?” said I. “As bo’sun of this vessel it would not please you to be ordered about by an able seaman.” He was silent. It was too dark to see anything of the man save the shapeless lump of shadow which he made against the stars over the sea. “Mr. Fielding,” said he, “can you tell me vhere dis brig vhas boun’ to?”