I inquired of the man upon whom I was quartered at supper, "how long the ship was out."
"That's more than I can tell you," returned the cruiser. "I've been only four months in this hooker. There's Dan and 'Shorty,' they are the only two men in the fo'c'stle that came from home in her. They can tell you; all the rest of us are cruisers."
"In Oahu. I ran away from the Cambridge, of New Bedford, and stowed away here in the fore peak. The 'kikos' came aboard three times, hunting for runaway men; but I'll defy any kiko to catch _me_."
"That's what they call the Kanaka policemen. They used to come down and take off the fore peak scuttle, and look down, and shove their sticks in; but you see they don't have but one pair of white trousers apiece, and don't mean to get 'em dirty. But if any kiko had crawled in where I was, he wouldn't have got out again alive."
"'Cause I'd have let daylight through him!"
I looked at the speaker reflectively, and involuntarily hitched a little further from him on the chest, feeling somewhat doubtful of close companionship with so dangerous a character. Yet the probability is, this man was as arrant a Falstaff as could be found in a day's journey.
"What made you run away from the Cambridge?"
"O, me and the old man had a row. Besides, I had been eight months in her, and that's long enough to be in one craft. I'd like to see the----hooker that would keep _me_ a year."
The speaker prefixed to the word hooker a sanguinary adjective, which is not applicable to ships except after a hard-fought action.
"Do you expect to stay out the voyage in that hooker?" inquired the beach-comber.
"Yes," said I, "I think I shall. I've been well used so far, and have nothing to complain of. I don't see any reason to leave the ship, with the chance of getting into a worse one."
"Ah, my lad, you're green yet. Wait awhile till you've seen more service, and you'll get tired of staying so long in one craft. I say, shift about and go by the cruise. Six months is plenty long enough in one hooker."
Some of the green hands were swallowing this kind of poison by wholesale; each one listening to a yarn of how the narrator had humbugged a shipping master, or bullied an American "counsle," or knocked over an officer of a ship in the discharge of his duty. The pleasures of a drunken spree and row with the police of a foreign port were duly set forth, and the peculiar delights of life in a calaboose depicted in glowing colors. But this species of conversation flagged after a time. The Mandarins boasted no musical instrument; but that curse and abomination of the forecastle, a greasy pack of cards, was produced, and furnished pastime for a small knot in one corner for a short time.