Omoo | Page 9

opened, the barrels of
pork looked as if preserved in iron rust, and diffused an odour like a
stale ragout. The beef was worse yet; a mahogany-coloured fibrous
substance, so tough and tasteless, that I almost believed the cook's story
of a horse's hoof with the shoe on having been fished up out of the
pickle of one of the casks. Nor was the biscuit much better; nearly all of
it was broken into hard, little gunflints, honeycombed through and
through, as if the worms usually infesting this article in long tropical
voyages had, in boring after nutriment, come out at the antipodes
without finding anything.
Of what sailors call "small stores," we had but little. "Tea," however,
we had in abundance; though, I dare say, the Hong merchants never
had the shipping of it. Beside this, every other day we had what English
seamen call "shot soup"--great round peas, polishing themselves like
pebbles by rolling about in tepid water.
It was afterward told me, that all our provisions had been purchased by
the owners at an auction sale of condemned navy stores in Sydney.
But notwithstanding the wateriness of the first course of soup, and the
saline flavour of the beef and pork, a sailor might have made a
satisfactory meal aboard of the Julia had there been any side dishes--a
potato or two, a yam, or a plantain. But there was nothing of the kind.
Still, there was something else, which, in the estimation of the men,
made up for all deficiencies; and that was the regular allowance of
Pisco.
It may seem strange that in such a state of affairs the captain should be
willing to keep the sea with his ship. But the truth was, that by lying in
harbour, he ran the risk of losing the remainder of his men by desertion;
and as it was, he still feared that, in some outlandish bay or other, he
might one day find his anchor down, and no crew to weigh it.
With judicious officers the most unruly seamen can at sea be kept in
some sort of subjection; but once get them within a cable's length of the
land, and it is hard restraining them. It is for this reason that many
South Sea whalemen do not come to anchor for eighteen or twenty
months on a stretch. When fresh provisions are needed, they run for the
nearest land--heave to eight or ten miles off, and send a boat ashore to
trade. The crews manning vessels like these are for the most part

villains of all nations and dyes; picked up in the lawless ports of the
Spanish Main, and among the savages of the islands. Like galley-slaves,
they are only to be governed by scourges and chains. Their officers go
among them with dirk and pistol--concealed, but ready at a grasp.
Not a few of our own crew were men of this stamp; but, riotous at
times as they were, the bluff drunken energies of Jennin were just the
thing to hold them in some sort of noisy subjection. Upon an
emergency, he flew in among them, showering his kicks and cuffs right
and left, and "creating a sensation" in every direction. And as hinted
before, they bore this knock-down authority with great good-humour.
A sober, discreet, dignified officer could have done nothing with them;
such a set would have thrown him and his dignity overboard.
Matters being thus, there was nothing for the ship but to keep the sea.
Nor was the captain without hope that the invalid portion of his crew,
as well as himself, would soon recover; and then there was no telling
what luck in the fishery might yet be in store for us. At any rate, at the
time of my coming aboard, the report was, that Captain Guy was
resolved upon retrieving the past and filling the vessel with oil in the
shortest space possible.
With this intention, we were now shaping our course for Hytyhoo, a
village on the island of St. Christina--one of the Marquesas, and so
named by Mendanna--for the purpose of obtaining eight seamen, who,
some weeks before, had stepped ashore there from the Julia. It was
supposed that, by this time, they must have recreated themselves
sufficiently, and would be glad to return to their duty.
So to Hytyhoo, with all our canvas spread, and coquetting with the
warm, breezy Trades, we bowled along; gliding up and down the long,
slow swells, the bonettas and albicores frolicking round us.


CHAPTER IV
.
A SCENE IN THE FORECASTLE
I HAD scarcely been aboard of the ship twenty-four hours, when a
circumstance occurred, which, although noways picturesque, is so

significant of the state of affairs that I cannot forbear relating it.
In the first place, however,