Captain Adam by Chidsey Donald Barr 1902-1981

Author:Chidsey, Donald Barr, 1902-1981
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown Publishers
Published: 1953-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

they treated me crool. Not enough to eat, no rum at all. The quarters was wet. They worked you to the bone. They 'eld up your wiges. Didn't like my mites, either. Scum. And there was other reasons. But most of all I was afride of getting the cat again."

"Flogging?"

"Aye."

"What had they flogged you for the first time?"

"Last man down."

"Down from where?"

Puzzled, and as always suspicious, Beach looked at him.

"Why, from the tops. I was a topper. We always riced mast aginst mast when there was any canvas to be mide or shortened. 'Smart' they calls it. 'Ad to be bleedin' acrobats, we 'oped to go on living. 'Op around like fleas up there, with the wessel rolling. Then when you'd worked an' pounded yourself barmy, with all them officers screechin' at you, then last one down rited two dozen. Every day. 'Cept Sunday. Our captain was a religious man."

"But the last man down had probably been the first one up!"

"Didn't mike no difference. 'E got two dozen. Wonst I saw a topper smash both 'is ankles, 'urrying to get down. Another time a messmite of mine get killed. But they still did it."

The skipper glanced at the cabin hatch, which was closed, no doubt to assure himself that that juicy ripe redhead he had down there wasn't listening to all this rough talk.

"How did you get to Providence?"

"Why, aboard of a wessel."

Adam Long looked at him. "Ax" for "ask," "fit" for "fought," and such possessives as "ourn," "hern," "yourn," and "hisn" he was familiar with, while other expressions this Londoner used were not wholly strange —for instance. Beach would say, "I wouldn't do it without I had some help," whereas a Rhode Islander would have said "wiihouten I had some help"—but the transposition of "w"s and "v"s never failed to bring him up short.

Beach, who didn't fancy the look, stared at the horizon, and he swallowed yet again, making his Adam's apple fairly leap.

"Well, I didn't expect you'd sxvum it," the skipper said at last. "But what boat? And where did you find out about it?"

"At Walter's. The plice that press gang tried to nap me. It's where you go when you wants to find out anything about the lads that're on the account. That's what I was doing there. Looking for transportation. Thought I was sife, specially in the daytime."

"I see," slowly. "You seem to have picked up a lot."

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