The South Sea Whaler | Page 4

long as they thought it their interest. And though he did his utmost to keep up strict discipline, he was obliged to humour them more than he would have been justified in doing under other circumstances. Though he might have used the lash,--very common in those days,--to flog men was repugnant to his feelings, and he preferred trying to keep them in order by kindness. Unhappily, many of them were of too brutal a nature to understand his object, so they fancied that he treated them as he did from timidity. Old Jacob Shobbrok urged stronger measures when some of the men refused to turn out to keep their watch, or went lazily about their work.
"We shall have the masts whipped out of the ship, if we don't trice up some of these fellows before long," he observed one day to the captain.
"Wait a bit, Jacob," answered Captain Tredeagle; "I will try them a little longer; but you can just let them know that if any of them again show a mutinous disposition, they will be flogged as surely as they are living men."
"They don't understand threats, captain," answered Jacob. "There's nothing like the practical teaching the cat affords with fellows of this description. I'll warn them, however, pretty clearly; and if that don't succeed, I must trust to you to show them that you will stand it no longer."
Jacob did not fail to speak to the men as he promised, and for a time they went on better; but the spirit of insubordination still existed among them, and gave the good captain much concern.
The boatswain, Jonah Capstick, who ought to have been the first to preserve discipline, was among the worst. It was the first voyage he had made with Captain Tredeagle, to whom he had been recommended as a steady man. One of his mates, Tom Hulk,--well named, for he was a big hulking ruffian,--was quite as bad, and with several others supported the boatswain.
Alice knew nothing of what was going forward, though Walter suspected that things were not quite right.
The great delight of Alice, as the ship entered the tropics, was to watch the strange fish which swam about the ship as she glided calmly on; to observe the ocean bathed in the silvery light of the moon, or the sun as it sank into its ocean bed, suffusing a rich glow over the sky and waters.
She and Walter were one day standing on deck together, when, looking up, they saw a small black dot in the blue sky.
"What can that be?" asked Alice. "It seems as if some one had thrown a ball up there. Surely it cannot be a balloon such as I have read of, though I never saw one."
"That is not a balloon, but a living creature," observed Jacob, who had overheard her. "It is a frigate-bird watching for its prey; and before long we shall see it pounce down to the surface of the ocean if it observes anything to pick up, though it is a good many hundred feet above our heads just now."
"See! see! what are those curious creatures which have just come out of the water? Why, they have wings! Can they be birds?" she exclaimed.
"No; those are flying-fish," said Walter, who knew better than his sister.
"And the frigate-bird has espied them too," exclaimed the mate. "Here he comes."
As he spoke, a large bird came swooping down like a flash of lightning from the heavens; and before the flying-fish, with their wings dried by the air, had again fallen into the water, it had caught one of them in its mouth. Swallowing the fish, the bird rapidly ascended, to be ready for another pounce on its prey. The flying-fish had evidently other enemies below the surface, for soon afterwards they were seen to rise at a short distance ahead; and once more the bird, descending with the same rapid flight as before, seized another, which it bore off.
"Poor fish! how cruel of the bird to eat them up," cried Alice.
"It is its way of getting its dinner," said the mate, laughing. "You would not object to eat the fish were they placed before you nicely fried at breakfast. Many seamen have been thankful enough to get them, when their ship has gone down and they have been sailing in their boats across the ocean, hard pressed by hunger."
"I was foolish to make the remark," said Alice; "and yet I cannot help pitying the beautiful flying-fish, snapped up so suddenly. But how can the bird come out here, so far away from land? Where can it rest at night?"
"It can keep on the wing for days and days together," answered the mate. "It is enabled to do this by having the muscles of its breast, which work the wings, of