One time--it was on a Saturday night, and the mate had been oncommon furious that week--Kentucky turned on him, very pale and slow (I was up in the mizzen-top, and heard him quite distinct). "Mr. Whitmarsh," says he,--"Mr. Whitmarsh,"--he draws his breath in,--"Mr. Whitmarsh,"--three times,--"you've got the power and you know it, and so do the gentlemen who put you here; and I'm only a stow-away boy, and things are all in a tangle, but _you'll be sorry yet for every time you've laid your hands on me_!" He hadn't a pleasant look about the eyes either, when he said it. Fact was, that first month on the Madonna had done the lad no good. He had a surly, sullen way with him, some'at like what I've seen about a chained dog. At the first, his talk had been clean as my baby's, and he would blush like any girl at Bob Smart's stories; but he got used to Bob, and pretty good, in time, at small swearing. I don't think I should have noticed it so much if it had not been for seeming to see Molly, and the sun, and the knitting-needles, and the child upon the deck, and hearing of it over, "Think if it was _him_!" Sometimes on a Sunday night I used to think it was a pity. Not that I was any better than the rest, except so far as the married men are always steadier. Go through any crew the sea over, and it is the lads who have homes of their own and little children in 'em as keep the straightest. Sometimes, too, I used to take a fancy that I could have listened to a word from a parson, or a good brisk psalm-tune, and taken it in very good part. A year is a long pull for twenty-five men to be becalmed with each other and the devil. I don't set up to be pious myself, but I'm not a fool, and I know that if we'd had so much as one officer aboard who feared God and kept his commandments, we should have been the better men for it. It's very much with religion as it is with cayenne pepper,--if it's there, you know it. If you had your ships on the sea by the dozen, you'd bethink you of that? Bless you, Tom! if you were in Rome you'd do as the Romans do. You'd have your ledgers, and your children, and your churches and Sunday schools, and freed niggers, and 'lections, and what not, and never stop to think whether the lads that sailed your ships across the world had souls, or not,--and be a good sort of man too. That's the way of the world. Take it easy, Tom,--take it easy. Well, things went along just about so with us till we neared the Cape. It's not a pretty place, the Cape, on a winter's voyage. I can't say as I ever was what you may call scar't after the first time rounding it, but it's not a pretty place. I don't seem to remember much about Kent along there till there come a Friday at the first of December. It was a still day, with a little haze, like white sand sifted across a sunbeam on a kitchen table. The lad was quiet-like all day, chasing me about with his eyes. "Sick?" says I. "No," says he. "Whitmarsh drunk?" says I. "No," says he.