In the Sargasso Sea | Page 8

glass together--in which, as I thought rather hard, Bowers was not
given a chance to join us--and then we went on deck and walked up and
down for a while, smoking our pipes and talking about the weather and
the prospects for the voyage. And it all went so easily and so pleasantly
that I couldn't help laughing a little to myself over my scare.
I turned in early, for I was pretty well tired after so lively a day; but
when I got into my bunk I could not get to sleep for a long
while--although the bunk was a good one and the easy motion of the
brig lulled me--for the excitement I was in because my voyage fairly
was begun. I slipped through my mind all that had happened to me that
day--from my meeting with Captain Luke in the forenoon until there I
was, at nine o'clock at night, fairly out at sea; and I was so pleased with
the series of lucky chances which had put me on my way so rapidly that
my one mischance--my scare about the shackles--seemed utterly
absurd.
It was perfectly reasonable, I reflected, for Captain Luke to carry out a
lot of shackles simply as "trade." It was pretty dirty "trade," of course,

but so was the vile so-called brandy he was carrying out with him; and
so, for that matter, were the arms--which pretty certainly would be used
in slaving forays up from the Coast. And even supposing the very
worst--that Captain Luke meant to ship a cargo of slaves himself and
had these irons ready for them--that worst would come after I was out
of the brig and done with her; the captain having told me that Loango,
which was my landing-place, would be his first port of call. When I
was well quit of the Golden Hind she and her crew and her captain, for
all that I cared, might all go to the devil together. It was enough for me
that I should be well treated on the voyage over; and from the way that
the voyage had begun--unless the surly mate and I might have a bit of a
flare-up--it looked as though I were going to be very well treated
indeed. And so, having come to this comforting conclusion, I let the
soft motion of the brig have its way with me and began to snooze.
A little later I was partly aroused by the sound of steps coming down
the companion-way; and then by hearing, in the mate's rumble, these
words: "I guess you're right, captain. As you had to run for it to-day
before you could buy our quinine, it's a damn good thing he did get
aboard, after all!"
I was too nearly asleep to pay much attention to this, but in a drowsy
way I felt glad that my stock of quinine had removed the mate's
objections to me as a passenger; and I concluded that my purchase of
such an absurd lot of it--after getting worked up by my reading about
the West Coast fevers--had turned out to be a good thing for me in the
long-run.
After that the talk went on in the cabin for a good while, but in such
low tones that even had I been wide awake I could not have followed it.
But I kept dozing off, catching only a word or two now and then; and
the only whole sentence I heard was in the mate's rumble again: "Well,
if we can't square things, there's always room for one more in the sea."
It all was very dream-like--and fitted into a dream that came later, in
the light sleep of early morning, I suppose, in which the mate wore the
uniform of a street-car conductor, and I was giving him doses of
quinine, and he was asking the passengers in a car full of salt-water to

move up and make room for me, and was telling them and me that in a
sea-car there always was room for one more.

IV
CAPTAIN LUKE MAKES ME AN OFFER
During the next fortnight or so my life on board the brig was as
pleasant as it well could be. On the first day out we got a slant of wind
that held by us until it had carried us fairly into the northeast
trades--and then away we went on our course, with everything set and
drawing steady, and nothing much to do but man the wheel and eat
three square meals a day.
And so everybody was in a good humor, from the captain down. Even
the mate rumbled what he meant to be a civil word to me now and then;
and Bowers and I--being nearly of an age, and each of us with