ts of
this office, while not great, will stand me in good stead when we reach
our destination, and enable me to set you, my dear boy--to borrow from
the vernacular--on your legs."

"You have deceived me, then!"

"Nay, nay, you do bear me hard, young man. To be disappointed is not the
same thing as to be deceived. True, you are not, as I hoped, supercargo,
but the conditions are not otherwise altered. You wished to go to
India--well, Zephyr's jocund breezes, as Catullus hath it, will waft you
thither: we are flying to the bright cities of the East. No fragile bark
is this, carving a dubious course through the main, as Seneca, I think,
puts it. No, 'tis an excellent vessel, with an excellent captain, who
will steer a certain course, who fears not the African blast nor the
grisly Hyades nor the fury of Notus--"

Desmond did not await the end of Diggle's peroration. It was then too
late to repine. The vessel was already rounding the Foreland, and though
he was more than half convinced that he had been decoyed on board on
false pretenses, he could not divine any motive on Diggle's part, and
hoped that his voyage would be not much less pleasant than he had
anticipated.

But even before the Good Intent made the Channel he was woefully
undeceived. His first interview with the captain opened his eyes. Captain
Barker was a small, thin, sandy man, with a large upper lip that met the
lower in a straight line, a lean nose, and eyes perpetually bloodshot.
His manner was that of a bully of the most brutal kind. He browbeat his
officers, cuffed and kicked his men, in his best days a martinet, in his
worst a madman. The only good point about him was that he never used the
cat, which, as Bulger said, was a mercy.

"Humph!" he said when Desmond was presented to him. "You're him, are you?
Well, let me tell you this, my lad: the ship's boy on board this 'ere
ship have got to do what he's bid, and no mistake about it. If he don't,
I'll make him. Now, you go for'ard into the galley and scrape the slush
off the cook's pans; quick's the word."

From that day Desmond led a dog's life. He found that as ship's boy he
was at the beck and call of the whole company. The officers, with the
exception of Mr. Toley, the melancholy first mate, took their cue from
the captain; and Mr. Toley, as a matter of policy, never took his part
openly. The men resented his superior manners and the fact that he was
socially above them. The majority of th