Tom Spink, hard-fibred Anglo-Saxon, good seaman that he is, long
tried and always proved, is quite wrecked in spirit. He is whining
and fearful. So broken is he, though he still does his work, that he
is prideless and shameless.
"I'll never ship around the Horn again, sir," he began on me the
other day when I greeted him good morning at the wheel. "I've sworn
it before, but this time I mean it. Never again, sir. Never again."
"Why did you swear it before?" I queried.
"It was on the Nahoma, sir, four years ago. Two hundred and thirty
days from Liverpool to 'Frisco. Think of it, sir. Two hundred and
thirty days! And we was loaded with cement and creosote, and the
creosote got loose. We buried the captain right here off the Horn.
The grub gave out. Most of us nearly died of scurvy. Every man Jack
of us was carted to hospital in 'Frisco. It was plain hell, sir,
that's what it was, an' two hundred and thirty days of it."
"Yet here you are," I laughed; "signed on another Horn voyage."
And this morning Tom Spink confided the following tome:
"If only we'd lost the carpenter, sir, instead of Boney.
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