“No,” said Peter again. “It never pays. If a mutiny is successful it only means that the men never dare show themselves in civilized parts again. If it is unsuccessful—well, who wants to die in prison? And, for my part, I ’d rather be shot than hanged. ’T would be interesting, now, to know what became of the men who were n’t taken. They may have made some island in the South Seas, and have lived in some bodily comfort for two or three years. But ’t is much more likely that they found themselves on the beach at one port after another, and could n’t ship in anything, even if they got the chance, without fear in their hearts. Probably they died in jail, after all, or had their throats cut by Chinese or Malay pirates. You don’t happen to know, Starbuck?” Starbuck shook his head. “If a man is unlucky enough to find himself in a ship where there ’s hard usage,” Peter went on, “the best thing he can do is to put up with it until he gets ashore again. Then he can make a call on the American consul. Even life in a South Sea island gets tedious after a while. A sailorman gets tired of lying on a mat and having his breadfruit and yams and chickens and coconuts brought {207} to him. If he ’s got the spirit of the sailor he can’t stand that very long, even if they don’t make their kings cut their throats in public every twelve years, which used to be the vile custom in Malabar. There was a shipmate of mine, thirty years back, that deserted somewhere in the South Seas, and got to one o’ these islands, and got to be king of it. He was glad to get away after two years of it—had to sneak out.” There was clamor for the yarn. Just as Peter had cleared his throat, and was about to begin it, his watch was called. “Aye, aye, sir,” he said. Then he turned to the others with a twinkle in his eye. “You see. Hard usage, I call it, to give a man no chance to spin a good yarn. Downright oppression, that ’s what it is.” I never heard that yarn of Peter’s. {208} CHAPTER XXII The day before we got into Cape Town I wrote a short letter home, and enclosed my journal. We came to in Table Bay the next morning, with the mass of Table Mountain looming to the eastward, and Devil’s Peak and the Lion’s Head and Signal Hill enclosing the town. The crew had liberty ashore, in relays, and the first boatload of liberty men were off within an hour. I do not know how the men spent their precious liberty.