“Along in the day, captain calls all hands on deck, and says, ‘we’ve had a pretty hard time boys, and new we’ll rig a new caboose, and clear up, and then we’ll splice the main brace and ’twas done quick and well, _for grog was ahead_.
“The captain says to me, ‘now cook, you go down and draw that ten quart pail full of wine, and give every man a half a pint; and drink and be merry boys, but let no man get drunk. Well, I got a good supper, and arter that a jollier set of fellers you never seed. We was runnin’ under a stiff breeze from N. W. and all sails well filled; and we had sea stories, and songs, and music, and all kinds of amusements, and the captain was as jolly as any body.
“Well, arter bedtime, the captain says, ‘cook, you must be my watch to-night,’ and he comes and tells me jist how to manage the helm; and he turns in, and I managed it _well_, for I’d managed his old sloop on the river, but this was somethin’ more of a circumstance; and afore the watch was up, I got so I could manage a ship as well as the fattest on ’em, and a tickelder feller you never see.
“In the mornin’ the hands praised me up; and the captain says, ‘why, he’s the best man aboard, for he can do _my duty_;’ and that made me feel good, and I got two considerable feathers in my cap that time.
“But I must hurry on. We made St. Bartholomews in nineteen days from New York, and sold cargo, and took in a load for Porto Rico, and there filled up with sugar and molasses, and put out for New York. The climate there was hot enough to scorch all the wool off a nigger’s head. The fever was ragin’ dreadfully in another part of the island, and we didn’t, any on us, pretend to go ashore much. The sand was so hot at noon ‘twould burn your feet, and the white inhabitants didn’t go out at all in the middle of the day; but the niggers didn’t seem to mind the heat at all; bare-footed, bare-headed, and half-naked; yis, more’n halt a considerable, and it seemed the hotter it was the better they liked it. But they suffered a good deal, and they’d come aboard our ship and try to make thick with the crew. They talked a broken lingo, kind’a Ginney, I s’pose; and they called white folks ‘buddee,’ and they’d say, ‘buddee give eat, and I give buddee orange.’ And so at night, they’d fetch their oranges aboard, and give a heap on ’em for a few sea-biscuit, and I tell ye, them oranges wan’t slow. One night, five or six on ’em fetched a big sea turkle aboard, and we bought him and paid a kag of biscuit for him, and he weighed two hundred and seventy pounds, and the fellers seemed dreadfully rejoiced, and patted their lips and bellies, and laughed, and kissed the captain’s feet, and laughed and seemed tickled enough, and off they went. Next day another feller come aboard, and says, ‘Cappy, you buy fat pig?’ ‘Yis, and when will you bring him?’ ‘Mornin’ Cappy.’ So, in the mornin’ he come aboard with his pig; he was small, but _terrible fat_; and so the captain pays him and looks at him, and says, ‘Jack, your pig is small.’ ‘Oh! massa, he’s small, but _dam old_.’ Oh! how the captain laughed! and he used that for a bye-word all the v’yge.