For a few days after the wreck it was hail fellow, well met, but Jack, once put upon an equality, began to take unwarrantable liberties, and as familiarity is generally the forerunner of contempt, so it proved in this case. Quarrels soon began and the passengers now took the opposite course of attempting to issue orders to the sailors and treating them as servants. This exasperated the crew and they swore that no earthly power should ever induce them to render the least assistance to the passengers. Large sums of money were offered the sailors to forage for provisions, but I am firmly persuaded that the man who accepted such an offer would have been murdered by his comrades. Mrs. Lock, for instance, incensed a seaman by telling him,--“You common sailor, why you no wait on lady? You ought to wait on officer’s lady! You refuse me, captain will flog you plenty.” Inaccessible Island was properly named, and one week after another passed without the sight of a sail or any tangible hope of rescue. Flimsy shelters were contrived, and nobody died of cold or hunger, but they were a gaunt, unkempt company, with much illness among them. Arrayed in their makeshift garments of crimson broadcloth, the camp was more like a travesty than a tragedy. No hardship could dull the militant spirits of Mrs. Commodore Lock and that young and handsome virago, Mrs. Lieutenant Painter. During one of their clashes, which was about to come to blows, the little lieutenant was trying to drag his strapping spouse into their tent while several passengers laid hold of the ponderous Mrs. Lock. Poor Captain Greig was heard to murmur: “Thank God we have almost no respectable ladies with us to witness such scenes as these!” Mrs. Lock had two small children with her, and it pleased the fancy of Mrs. Painter to say that, in her opinion, the paternity of the offspring would have been better established if the commodore had offered marriage a few years earlier. Mrs. Painter put it even more forcefully than this. At the deadly insult Mrs. Lock broke out in impassioned accents: “What you think? That vile hussy of a Painter woman, she say me no Commodore Lock’s wife. Me lose my--what you call it--wedding ’tifcate on board ship, so me no have proof now--but when we come to Bombay, my commodore he kicks dirty little Painter out of the service, and me get ten thousand rupees of defamation damage. That Painter woman’s father am a common, dirty boatman!” At this Mrs. Painter, with lofty disdain, let fall the remark: “Behold the she-devil and her two little imps!” The sailors felt so little respect for the commodore’s wife that one of them coarsely observed, within her hearing: “If we run short of them penguins’ eggs, Bill, and there ain’t nothin’ else to eat, we’ll pop the old girl’s young ’uns into the pot for a bit of broth.”