Tom was very ill for the first two days of the voyage, while Peter did
not feel the slightest effects from the motion. Upon the third day the
wind dropped suddenly, and the vessels rolled heavily in the swell,
with their sails flapping against the masts. Tom came up that morning
upon deck feeling quite well again, and the boys were immensely amused
at seeing the attempts of the soldiers to move about, the sudden
rushes, and the heavy falls. A parade had been ordered to take place;
but as no one could have stood steady without holding on, it was
abandoned as impossible. The men sat about under the bulwarks, and a
few amused themselves and the rest by trying to play various games,
such as laying a penny on the deck, and seeing which would pitch
another to lay nearest to it, from a distance of five yards. The
difficulty of balancing oneself in a heavily rolling vessel, and of
pitching a penny with any degree of accuracy, is great, and the manner
in which the coins, instead of coming down flat and remaining there,
rolled away into the scuppers, the throwers not unfrequently following
them, produced fits of laughter.
Tom was still feeling weak from his two days' illness, and was not
disposed actively to enter into the fun; but Peter enjoyed the heavy
rolling, and was all over the ship. Presently he saw Sam, the black
drummer, sitting in a dark corner below quietly asleep; his cap was
beside him, and the idea at once occurred to Peter that here was a
great opportunity for a joke. He made his way to the caboose, and
begged the cook to give him a handful of flour. The cook at first
refused, but was presently coaxed into doing so, and Peter stole to
where Sam was asleep, and put the flour into his cap, relying that, in
the darkness, Sam would put it on without noticing it. Then, going up
to the deck above, Peter put his head down the hatchway, and shouted
loudly, "Sam!"
The negro woke at the sound of his name. "What is it?" he asked.
Receiving no reply, he got on to his feet, muttering, "Some one call
Sam, that for certain, can't do without Sam, always want here, want
there. I go up and see."
So saying, he put on his cap, and made his way up to the upper deck.
As he stood at the hatchway and looked round, there was, first a
titter, and then a roar of laughter from the men sitting or standing
along by the bulwarks. In putting on his cap some of the flour had
fallen out, and had streaked his face with white. Sam was utterly
unconscious that he was the object of the laughter, and said to one of
the men nearest to him, "Who call Sam?"
The man could not reply, but Tom, who was sitting close by, said, "It
was no one here, Sam, it must have been the bandmaster; there he is,
close to the quarter-deck."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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