HAT Captain Jackson was at no time quite certain as to the true personality of Sinful Peck and his thirteen mutinous shipmates is an admitted fact. He knew that they had been delivered aboard his ship in New York harbor, helplessly stupefied, but signed to the articles for the voyage to Shanghai and home again. He knew their claim, that they were victims of Sinful Peck's nefarious plottings. He knew that their speech was that of reading men.
But Mr. Peck explained everything by the fact that these were lake sailors instead of salt-water men, and that, consequently, they had the advantage of daily newspapers ever at their command. Furthermore, the bland and buoyant little man had saved the captain's life when they of the extravagant claims had the upper hand of the ship. Therefore, the voyage southeastward across the Atlantic, through the Indian Ocean, and into the China Sea, was drawing near an end, with Sinful Peck complacent as third mate, and the riotous thirteen in irons in the .
The lazarette on board ship is the space within the poop, or quarterdeck, and is usually entered by a small hatch on the starboard side, abaft the cabin trunk, which latter is built up from the main deck and extends above it to give room for windows and companionways. The alley at each side of the house, and the open part abaft containing the wheel and binnacle, are duplicated below, and the forward ends of the lazarette alley, or “wings,” can be entered by two ports under the poopsteps, closed and caulked at sea, and secured from within by ringbolts and bars. In the median lines of the alleys arise in the after part, abreast of the wheel, the quarter-bitts—strong posts for mooring the ship—which are also built up from the main deck and extend above it.
The lazarette is a handy place to stow coils of rope, spun yarn, and marline, bolts of canvas, bales of oakum, and similar stores in the mate's department. It is also a good place to stow unruly sailors, and in this regard has but one drawback—its contiguity to the cabin, through the thin walls of which may filter profanity and disrespectful opinions of the captain and officers. And when there are as many as thirteen unruly sailors confined in the lazarette—thirteen aggressive, reckless,—self-respecting Americans reduced to the happiness of desperation, the noise they can make, the language they can use, and the songs they can sing at unseemly hours of night, give this drawback the importance of a positive menace to health.
Captain Jackson had not slept for forty-eight hours following the incarceration of the mutineers, and his consequent irritability was not decreased by the cheerfulness of his third mate, who sleeping in the port forward corner of the cabin with the first mate, had with selfish sagacity, when given the work, stretched the heavy chain to which the prisoners were manacled along the starboard alley from the quarter-bitt to the ring-bolt in the port. To this chain he had moored the unruly thirteen when conquered and docile; but now, rested and mutually encouraged, with the certainty of jail in Shanghai ahead of them, and nothing to be lost by further violence, they assumed an attitude that made their shifting over to the other side a task at which Captain Jackson hesitated.
It had been found manifestly impracticable to confine by the hands so many men, who must eat and drink; so, excepting for one, leg irons had been substituted for wrist irons, and their arms were left free. These arms were powerful levers terminating in vises or hammers, according to their owner's intent.
Of the fourteen men from Cleveland who had sailed from New York in that ship's forecastle, Sinful Peck alone had escaped the physical upbuilding coming of fresh air, hard work, and simple fare. Stoop shoulders had straightened, knotty muscles had grown on frames long burdened with fat, obesity was gone from them, sunken eyes had filled out and brightened, many wrinkles had left their faces, and it even seemed that there were less gray hairs in their heads. In appearance they were twenty years younger, and in behavior, thirty.