"And there's others that don't like us, too," Bill added. "I told 'em, though, that if they got funny with me or you, I'd show 'em what was what." "Who are they?" I asked, suddenly remembering Roger Hamlin's warning. "Davie Paine is one." "But I thought he didn't like Kipping or Mr. Falk!" "He didn't for a while; but there was something happened that turned his mind about them." I worked away with the tar-bucket and reflected on this unexpected change in the attitude of the deep-voiced seaman who, on our first day aboard ship, had seen Kipping wink at the second mate. It was all so trivial that I was ready to laugh at myself for thinking of it twice, and yet stupid old Bill Hayden had noticed it. A new suspicion startled me. "Bill, did any one say anything to you about any plan or scheme that Kipping is concerned in?" I asked. "Why, yes. Didn't they speak to you about it?" "About what?" "Why, about a voyage that all the men was to have a venture in. I thought they talked to every one. I didn't want anything to do with it if Kipping was to have a finger in the pie. I told 'em 'No!' and they swore at me something awful, and said that if ever I blabbed I'd never see my little wee girl at Newburyport again. So I never said nothing." He looked at me with a frightened expression. "It's funny they never said nothing to you. Don't you tell 'em I talked. If they thought I'd split, they'd knock me in the head, that's what they' d do." "Who's in it besides Kipping and Davie Paine?" "The two men from Boston and Chips and the steward. Them's all I know, but there may be others. The men have been talking about it quiet like for a good while now." As Mr. Falk came forward on some errand or other, we stopped talking and worked harder than ever at tarring down the rigging. Presently Bill repeated without turning his head, "Don't you tell 'em I said anything, will you, Bennie? Don't you tell 'em." And I replied, "No." We then had passed the Canaries and the Cape Verdes, and had crossed the Line; from the most western curve of Africa we had weathered the narrows of the Atlantic almost to Pernambuco, and thence, driven by fair winds, we had swept east again in a long arc, past Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha, and on south of the Cape of Good Hope. The routine of a sailor's life is full of hard work and petty detail. Week follows week, each like every other. The men complain about their duties and their food and the officers grow irritable. There are few stories worth telling in the drudgery of life at sea, but now and then in a long, long time fate and coincidence conspire to unite in a single voyage, such as that which I am chronicling, enough plots and crimes and untoward incidents to season a dozen ordinary lifetimes spent before the mast.