The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras Part 10

"I don't care to sail far, Garry; and I think it's enough to have come as far as this, and to try to get through here where the Devil doesn't mean to let us through."

"Well, we sha'n't get through," retorted Pen. "O, when I think I have already forgotten how gin tastes!"

"But," said Bolton, "remember what the doctor said."

"O," answered Pen, with his rough voice, "that's all very well to say!

I fancy that they are economizing it under the pretext of saving our health."

"Perhaps that devil Pen is right," said Gripper.

"Come, come!" replied Bolton, "his nose is too red for that; and if a little abstinence should make it a trifle paler, Pen won't need to be pitied."

"Don't trouble yourself about my nose," was the answer, for Pen was rather vexed. "My nose doesn't need your advice; it doesn't ask for it; you'd better mind your own business."

"Come, don't be angry, Pen; I didn't think your nose was so tender. I should be as glad as any one else to have a gla.s.s of whiskey, especially on such a cold day; but if in the long run it does more harm than good, why, I'm very willing to get along without it."

"You may get along without it," said Warren, the stoker, who had joined them, "but it's not everybody on board who gets along without it."

"What do you mean, Warren?" asked Garry, looking at him intently.

"I mean that for one purpose or another there is liquor aboard, and I fancy that aft they don't get on without it."

"What do you know about it?" asked Garry.

Warren could not answer; he spoke for the sake of speaking.

"You see, Garry," continued Bolton, "that Warren knows nothing about it."

"Well," said Pen, "we'll ask the commander for a ration of gin; we deserve it, and we'll see what he'll say."

"I advise you not to," said Garry.

"Why not?" cried Pen and Gripper.

"Because the commander will refuse it. You knew what the conditions were when you shipped; you ought to think of that now."

"Besides," said Bolton, who was not averse to taking Garry's side, for he liked him, "Richard Shandon is not master; he's under orders like the rest of us."

"Whose orders?" asked Pen.

"The captain's."

"Ah, that ridiculous captain's!" cried Pen. "Don't you know there's no more captain than there is tavern on the ice? That's a mean way of refusing politely what we ask for."

"But there is a captain," persisted Bolton; "and I'll wager two months' pay that we shall see him before long."

"All right!" said Pen; "I should like to give him a piece of my mind."

"Who's talking about the captain?" said a new speaker.

It was Clifton, who was inclined to be superst.i.tious and envious at the same time.

"Is there any news about the captain?" he asked.

"No," a single voice answered.

"Well, I expect to find him settled in his cabin some fine morning, and without any one's knowing how or whence he came aboard."

"Nonsense!" answered Bolton; "you imagine, Clifton, that he's an imp, a hobgoblin such as are seen in the Scotch Highlands."

"Laugh if you want to, Bolton; that won't alter my opinion. Every day as I pa.s.s the cabin I peep in through the keyhole, and one of these days I'll tell you what he looks like, and how he's made."

"O, the devil!" said Pen; "he'll look like everybody else. And if he wants to lead us where we don't want to go, we'll let him know what we think about it."

"All right," said Bolton; "Pen doesn't know him, and wants to quarrel with him already."

"Who doesn't know all about him?" asked Clifton, with the air of a man who has the whole story at his tongue's end; "I should like to know who doesn't."

"What do you mean?" asked Gripper.

"I know very well what I mean."

"But we don't."

"Well, Pen has already had trouble with him."

"With the captain?"

"Yes, the dog-captain; for it's the same thing precisely."

The sailors gazed at one another, incapable of replying.

"Dog or man," muttered Pen, between his teeth, "I'll bet he'll get his account settled one of these days."

"Why, Clifton," asked Bolton, seriously, "do you imagine, as Johnson said in joke, that that dog is the real captain?"

"Certainly, I do," answered Clifton, with some warmth; "and if you had watched him as carefully as I have, you'd have noticed his strange ways."

"What ways? Tell us."

"Haven't you noticed the way he walks up and down the p.o.o.p-deck as if he commanded the ship, keeping his eye on the sails as if he were on watch?"

"That's so," said Gripper; "and one evening I found him with his paws on the wheel."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Impossible!" said Bolton.