Bennie Ben Cree | Page 8

bombard."
And it was the 17th of February when we stood out into the river at last. My father was among a crowd of people cheering on the dock in the Wallabout Canal.
The wind was blowing bitter and cold, and cakes of ice were floating about us, as we slid into the bay after a tug that made a great swash and tumult in front. But the sky was as clear as if it were the first and newest of all days.

CHAPTER III.
DOWN THE COAST--CAVARLY'S PLAN.
The Octarara might have ranked as a gunboat or a second-class cruiser, and it might be the Government did not rank her very high, for the only regular military aboard were three gunners and Simpson, chief gunner. Cavarly made Simpson master-at-arms, and set him drilling the crew, and left him mostly alone at it. Himself and Morgan, who ranked as mate, seemed to take no part in it, but to look on in a pleased kind of way, and find it quite amusing. They sailed the ship, with the other two Baltimore men, Gerry and Still, steersmen, and the engineers and stokers did nothing but oil cranks and polish brass. For Cavarly appeared to be in no hurry, nor anxious to use up coal, and nobody minded that, except Simpson. I did not like Simpson. Neither did Simpson like the Octarara, nor anything about her, and this with his falling foul of me immediately made me think him a person impossible to please.
"Cap'n Cavalry," said Simpson, "beggin' your pardon, does that there boy belong fore or aft?"
"I reckon he belongs to you," said Cavarly cheerfully. "Discipline. Tha's it. Discipline."
"Git for'ard, you young pup!" cried Simpson, "ef you'll 'low me, cap'n. Pick up them lanyards. You hear me!"
"Haw, haw!" said Cavarly softly, and, looking back with furtive eyes from a safe distance, I saw Dan Morgan also and Calhoun by the taffrail laughing, and I thought it treacherous and unfriendly.
The next four days and nights I was hating Simpson busily, and wishing the deep sea between him and me. We were ever and again up to "repel boarders," and nothing in sight but the blank sea, or maybe a glimpse of the low peaceful Jersey coast. Seeing me idle or in any way happy put Simpson in a mad rage; but I could wish that gruff warrant officer no worse ill luck than such a raw and mixed crew as ours to put in shape, with a captain and mate appearing to regard him as a joke and taking no responsibility themselves. What could be more distressful to such a man than to have for superior officers Dan Morgan, playing his banjo half the day; Cavarly, looking on with an everlasting cigar, and a mysterious gentleman supercargo like Calhoun?
The wind was clean and steady, and Cavarly kept the Octarara close reefed, at half her speed; she crept down the coast with little shift of sail day or night, and on the 20th passed some fifteen miles to seaward of Delaware Bay. Except for Simpson drilling and roughing, it was an idle enough crew.
I was not so ignorant of sailing--what with knocking about wharves and handling catboats on the river--as not to know that Cavarly was purposely taking his time; and if I had been, the talk in the forecastle would have set me thinking, though for that matter I did not know that the forecastle always criticizes the cabin, as one of the rights of labour. I did not think much of Simpson's opinion, through simple dislike, beginning things with such general misjudgment of men as maybe is the case with most; but Simpson was not alone in thinking the conduct of the cabin peculiar.
After the morning drill exercise on the 20th there were more black-clay pipes going around the small safety stove in the forecastle than could be counted in the smoke. A dingy place, the forecastle, at best, but one that a man may grow to like well enough, if not over-squeamish. Simpson was there, and Gerry, and the bos'en, Hames, and an Irishman named Tobin, whose hair was red and thin.
"Will we get there, do ye think, Jimmie Hames?" said Tobin.
"Where?"
"Aw, beyant. Will it be while we're still young?"
"It ain't that we won't git there," said Hames slowly. "It's why the ol' man don't want to git there soon as he kin. He don't, an' that's straight. Here's Gerry now, that comed with him from Baltimore. I asks him now, why don't he?"
Gerry puffed deliberately.
"Why," he said at last, "I come f'om Baltimore. I don't deny it, do I? But if you asks, why don't he? I says, I reckon he has sec'et orders. But, I says, he never showed 'em to me. An'," he went on with ponderous scorn, "the Sec'etary o' the