een decks abaft the
funnel. Yet the great saloon I was to use during so many months, the
quarters which Black occupied, the doctor's room, the rooms for the
engineers, and for certain of the others who were privileged, were all
ranged amidships; and I learned that while there was a big fo'castle,
it was given over entirely to the niggers, with whom the white men
would not serve. These superior fellows, as they thought themselves,
had accommodation in the poop, where there was a big cabin with berths
all round it; yet with all this, the small part of the whole vessel
devoted to quarters was noteworthy, and was designed, I did not doubt,
for some purpose which I should learn presently.

These things I did not ascertain, you may be sure, on first boarding
the ship. Although they left me to myself upon the high gallery whence
I could see all the life on the decks below, they were so busy with the
preparation for weighing anchor that no man spoke a word to me. The
hands themselves, the moment they were afloat, settled down to work
with surprising steadiness. Black upon the bridge now wore a smart
uniform with gold buttons and much show of lace; and the self-command
of the man, the perfect knowledge of all things nautical which he
displayed, and his all-absorbing love of his child, the ship, accounted
for much that I had not understood in him before. I found to my
amazement that Doctor Osbart acted not only as surgeon to the crew, but
also as second officer; "Four-Eyes" being first officer; and the bully,
"Roaring John," third. The coarse-mouthed Scotsman who assumed the
title of "meenister" was, they told me, as good a seaman as any of
them, and a wonderful gunner, so that he was in charge of the armament,
with a big staff of men at his back. Of the engineers I saw nothing on
first coming aboard; but later I heard the sound of pumping below, and
there came up to the bridge where Black and the others were, a little,
thin, wizened, and spectacled man, quite bald, very ragged and black,
yet with a head on him that could have stamped him "First-Class" in any
assembly of the learned. I thought at the first glance that he was a
German, and my surmise was confirmed by the doctor, who remembered me
at last, and said--

"Do you see that little fellow?--well, he's the genius of this ship.
He's deaf and dumb, and no man has ever heard a word from his lips; but
he designed our engines, and he runs them with his three sons. It's
almost