One morning he ordered Kelly, in a very arbitrary way, to go on deck and bring him down some water, which Kelly flatly refused to do. The sea-lawyer declared he would "make him do it;" and upon Kelly's expressing a doubt as to his ability to perform that feat, he proceeded to enforce his command, _vi et armis_. But he was met by the boy with a spirit that he had not looked for, and before he could get a good hold upon the youngster, so as to chastise him, as he expected easily to do, he was attacked in the rear by Obed B., who arrived on the field just in time to reinforce his chum and schoolmate. This gave Kelly a chance to rally and assume the offensive; and Burley, who was a most arrant coward, finding himself roughly handled between the two, was fain to call for an armistice. A parley ensued, and the boys gave him to understand that they did not come to sea to be boys, but to make themselves men, and that they would not submit to be bullied by him. And the upshot of the matter was, that the champion of "rights" made rather an ignominious retreat from the field, as compared with the vigor of his first attack. All this was nuts, of course, to the rest of us youngsters, who desired nothing more earnestly than to see the bully humbled a little; while the emotion of Manoel was too powerful to find utterance--in intelligible English. He patted the two boys on the shoulder, in the exuberance of his spirits, while his tongue rattled until I thought all his teeth were loose in the jaws; but to save my life, I could not have told what he was trying to say. There was plenty of work for all hands on the passage out, as every one will understand who has ever performed a voyage in a new ship. We found our duties very fatiguing, as we were kept at work all day, and had a watch to stand at night. There was all the new rigging to be stretched and set up over and again, in addition to the thousand and one other matters to be attended to, to put everything in trim for whaling against the opening of the campaign. The old salts growled night and day in the forecastle about having no "watch below;" but as we verdant ones had but a vague idea of what they meant by it, we had but little to say about this grievance. CHAPTER V. THE WESTERN ISLANDS.--"YARNS" AND ANECDOTES.