Voyage of the Liberdade | Page 6

hundred drops of laudanum and as much chlorodyne could

travel through Europe afterward on the profits of his sales.
It was at Rosario, and at this time, that we buried our young friend,
Captain Speck, well loved of young and old. His friends did not ask
whether it was cholera or not that he died of, but performed the last act
of friendship as became men of heart and feeling. The minister could
not come that day, but Captain Speck's little friend, Garfield, said: "The
flags were set for the angels to come and take the Captain to Heaven!"
Need more be said?
And the flags blew out all day.
Then it became us to erect a memorial slab, and, hardest of all, to write
to the widow and orphans. This was done in a homely way, but with
sympathetic, aching hearts away off there in Santa Fè.
Our time at Rosario, after this, was spent in gloomy days that dragged
into weeks and months, and our thoughts often wandered from there to
a happy past. We preferred to dwell away from there and in other
climes, if only in thought. There was, however, one happy soul among
us--the child whose face was a sunbeam in all kinds of weather and at
all times, happy in his ignorance of the evils that fall to the lot of man.
Our sailing-day from Rosario finally came; and, with a feeling as of
casting off fetters, the lines were let go, and the bark hauled out into the
stream, with a full cargo on board; but, instead of sailing for Rio, as per
charter, she was ordered by the Brazilian consul to Ilha Grande (Great
Island), the quarantine station of Brazil, some sixty-two miles west of
Rio, there to be disinfected and to discharge her cargo in quarantine.
A new crew was shipped and put aboard, but while I was getting my
papers, about noon, they stole one of the ship's boats and scurried off
down the river as fast, no doubt, as they could go. I have not seen them
or my boat since. They all deserted,--every mother's son of them!
taking, beside the boat, a month's advance pay from a Mr. Dutch Harry,
a sailor boarding-master, who had stolen my inward crew that he might,
as he boasted afterward, "ship new hands in their places." In view of
the fact that this vilest of crimps was the loser of the money, I could

almost forgive the "galoots" for the theft of my boat. (The ship is
usually responsible for advance wages twenty-four hours after she has
sailed, providing, too, that the sailors proceed to sea in her.) Seeing,
moreover, that they were of that stripe, unworthy the name of sailor,
my vessel was the better without them, by at least what it cost to be rid
of them, namely, the price of my boat.
However, I will take back what I said about Dutch Harry being the
"vilest crimp." There came one to Rosario worse than he, one "Pete the
Greek," who cut off the ears of a rival boarding-master at the Boca,
threw them into the river, then, making his escape to Rosario, some 180
miles away, established himself in the business in opposition to the
Dutchman, whom he "shanghaied" soon after, then "reigned peacefully
in his stead."
A captain who, like myself, had suffered from the depredations of this
noted gentry, told me, in great glee, that he saw Harry on a bone-laden
Italian bark outward bound,--"even then nearly out of the river." The
last seen of him by my friend, the captain, was "among the branches,"
with a rope around his neck--they hanged him, maybe--I don't know
what else the rope was for, or who deserved more to be hanged. The
captain screamed with delight:--"he'll get bone soup, at least, for a
while, instead of Santa Fè good mutton-chops at our expense."
My second crew was furnished by Mr. Pete, before referred to, and on
the seventeenth of December we set sail from that country of
revolutions. Things soon dropped into working order, and I found
reason to be pleased with the change of crew. We glided smoothly
along down the river, thence wishing never again to see Rosario under
the distressing circumstances through which she had just passed.
On the following day, while slipping along before a light, rippling
breeze, a dog was espied out in the current, struggling in the whirlpools,
which were rather strong, apparently unable to extricate himself, and
was greatly exhausted. Coming up with him our main-tops'l was laid to
the mast, and as we ranged by the poor thing, a sailor, plunging over
the side in a bow-line, bent a rope on to doggy, another one hauled him
carefully on board, and the rescue