Our pretence was we were all bound for St. Jago, and the crew seemed
to take this for understood. I didn't like their looks. Martin said
they were an ignorant lot, and chosen for that reason. All I had to
do was to run south, and he undertook to give them the slip at the
first point we touched.
"He had a wonderful command over them, considering that he was but
one plotter in a dozen; and for reasons of his own he kept them off
me and the map. On our way he proposed to me that I should teach him
a little navigation; helped me take the reckonings; and picked it up
as easy as a child learns its letters. But his keeping watch over me
and the map was what broke up the crew's patience. I was holding the
schooner straight down for the Gulf of Honduras, and, by my
reckoning, within a few hours of making a landfall, wondering all the
while that they took the courses I laid without grumbling--though by
this time our course was past all explaining--when the quarrel broke
out.
"I was standing by the wheel with a seaman, Dick Hayling by name, a
civil fellow, and more to my liking than the most of them, when we
heard a racket in the forecastle, and by-and-by Martin--he was too
fond, to my taste of going down into the forecastle and making free
with the men--comes up the hatchway, very serious, with half a dozen
behind him.
Pages:
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204