Chapter 16 - Page 2

pipe with a long stem inlaid with
mother-of-pearl, and took a sip from time to time from a cup of black
coffee that was standing on the skylight.

"What is your name?" he asked, nodding in reply to Salvé's salute.

"Salvé."

"Salvé," repeated the captain, with an English pronunciation of the
name; "and Norwegian?"

"He looks too respectable for the pack he'll have to herd with," he
muttered to the boatswain.

"Able seaman?"

"Yes."

"You have had three guineas on account?" he went on, after a couple of
puffs to keep his pipe alight, as he looked into his ledger; "a month's
wages."

"No, sir," said Salvé, firmly, "I have had nothing on account,"--and he
proceeded then to relate the circumstances under which the supposed
payment had been made. "I have not been regularly engaged till this
moment, if I am so now; but up to this I have been treated like a dog,
and worse."

The captain took no notice of his last observation, and merely said
shortly and sternly--

"The three guineas are owing to him, boatswain Jenkins. His place will
be in the foretop. A steady hand will be wanted among all that rabble
there."

"Another time you'll perhaps play on your own account, and not on the
sailors'," he observed, turning to the boatswain; but Salvé caught the
remark.

With this the conference came to an end, the boatswain's expression
prophesying that when the opportunity offered Salvé should pay for his
triumph. He went about nursing his prominent chin, and twisting his
yellow whiskers, and found a victim for the present in a wretched
Mulatto, who was scouring for the cook. After first correcting him
sharply for nothing, he coolly felled him to the deck with a handspike,
and left him lying there unable to move.

Salvé's blood boiled at the sight; but his indignation gave way
presently to astonishment when he saw the poor fellow get up and go on
indefatigably with his work, after first quietly wiping his own blood
off the saucepan. There was a limit to brutality, he thought, and in his
disgust he almost envied him the blow he had received.

He provided himself now from the purser with a suit of seaman's clothes
in lieu of the rather damaged cloth ones which he wore; and the
sailmaker gave him out hammock clothes, to be paid for out of his wages.
He proceeded then to hang his hammock from one of the beams between
decks; and while he was doing so observed another man in a canvas suit
like his own, similarly occupied, not far from him. He couldn't be