he
year! A bad lookout when you come to consider it fairly as I have; and
when you have a cap'en as is continually working the men to death and
a-swearin' and a-drivin' at them, and they undermanned too, why it
stands to reason that harm will come: you're bound to have a muss, you
bet, before the voyage is through!

"We'd hardly cleared the Gulf of Florida when the weather got bad, with
a foul wind and a heavy sea; and we were driven past Cape Hatteras
before we could make a bit of easting in our longitude. You never saw
such a rough time of it as we had. The watch below had no sooner turned
in than they had to be called up again to reef topsails or make sail,
for there were too few hands to be of much use without both watches
worked together, and so the men had to do double tides, as it were, with
neither time to eat nor sleep comfortably. To add to their hardships,
they were constantly in wet clothes, as it poured with rain the whole
time; besides which, the ship was so heavily laden that we were
continually taking in seas over the bows as she laboured, the water
washing aft of course, and drenching them who might have escaped the
rain to the skin, so that not a soul aboard had a dry rag on. You can
imagine, sir, how the men stomached this, particularly when there was
the skipper swearing at 'em all the time, and saying that they were lazy
lubbers and not worth their salt, when they were trying hard to do their
best, as I must give them the credit of! I spoke to the cap'en, but it
was of no use--not a bit; you might just as well have expected a capstan
bar to hear reason!

"`Mr Marling,' says he, in the still way he always spoke when he was
real angry. `Mr Marling, I'm captain of my own ship, and always intend
to be so as long as I can draw my breath: I'll thank you to mind your
own business!'

"What could I say after that? Nothing; and so I said nothing more,
although I could almost foresee what was coming, step by step!

"This dirty weather had been going on for about a fortnight, or
thereabouts; the wind heading us every now and then and veering back
again to the southward and westwards, accompanied by squalls of hail and
rain following each other with lightning rapidly; so that no sooner had
one cleared off than another was on to us, and we had to clear up
everything and let the ship drive before the gale as she pleased, for it
was of no use trying to make a fair wind out of a foul one any longer.
As