"Oh, if you mean to head a mutiny----"
"Heaven forbid, sir! But I won't leave the deck in dirty weather like
this till the captain knows where he is."
Towards sunset it got clearer, and they drifted past a revenue cutter,
who was lying to with her head to the northward. She hoisted no end of
signals, but they understood none of them, and her captain gesticulated
wildly on her deck.
"What is that Fantoccio dancing at?" inquired Captain Robarts brutally.
"To see a first-class ship drift to leeward in a narrow sea with a fair
wind," said Dodd bitterly.
At night it blew hard, and the sea ran high and irregular. The ship began
to be uneasy, and Robarts very properly ordered the top-gallant and royal
yards to be sent down on deck. Dodd would have had them down twelve hours
ago. The mate gave the order: no one moved. The mate went forward angry.
He came back pale. The men refused to go aloft: they would not risk their
lives for Captain Robarts.
The officers all assembled and went forward: they promised and
threatened; but all in vain. The crew stood sullen together, as if to
back one another, and put forward a spokesman to say that "there was not
one of them the captain hadn't started, and stopped his grog a dozen
times: he had made the ship hell to them; and now her masts and yards and
hull might go there along with her skipper, for them.
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