Desmond did not wait the end of Diggle’s peroration. It was too late to repine. The vessel was already rounding the Foreland, and though he was more than half convinced that he had been decoyed on board on false pretences, he could not divine any motive on Diggle’s part, and hoped that his voyage would be not much less pleasant than he had anticipated. But even before the _Good Intent_ made the Channel he was woefully undeceived. His first interview with the captain opened his eyes. Captain Barker was a small, thin, sandy man, with a large upper lip that met the lower in a straight line, a lean nose, and eyes perpetually bloodshot. His manner was that of a bully of the most brutal kind. He browbeat his officers, cuffed and kicked his men, in his best days a martinet, in his worst a madman. The only good point about him was that he never used the cat, which, as Bulger said, was a mercy. "Humph!" he said when Desmond was presented to him. "You’re him, are you? Well, let me tell you this, my lad: the ship’s boy on board this ’ere ship have got to do what he’s bid, and no mistake about it. If he don’t, I’ll make him. Now you go for’ard into the galley and scrape the slush off the cook’s pans; quick’s the word." From that day Desmond led a dog’s life. He found that as ship’s boy he was at the beck and call of the whole company. The officers, with the exception of Mr. Toley, the melancholy first mate, took their cue from the captain; and Mr. Toley, as a matter of policy, never sided with him openly. The men resented his superior manners and the fact that he was socially above them. The majority of the seamen were even more ruffianly than the specimens he had seen at the _Waterman’s Rest_--the scum of Wapping and Rotherhithe. His only real friend on board was Bulger, who helped him to master the many details of a sailor’s work, and often protected him against the ill-treatment of his mates; and, in spite of his one arm, Bulger was a power to be reckoned with.