Captain Scott was as commonplace a little man as ever commanded an old wooden tub of a barque lumbering her way forlornly from port to port seeking freight as a beggar seeks pence. His command, the Sarah Jane, belonged to a decayed firm of shipowners that, like many other old-fashioned tradesmen, had not kept pace with the times, and were now reduced to the possession of this ancient pauper and a still older brig, all the rest of their once stately fleet having been sold or lost or seized to satisfy mortgages. Yet they still retained a keen sense of respectability, and when Captain Scott applied for the command of the Sarah Jane they were exceedingly careful to ascertain that he was strictly sober and trustworthy. He not only succeeded in satisfying them on these points, but in some mysterious manner persuaded them also that he was exceedingly pious, and would certainly hold service on board every Sunday, weather permitting. That settled his appointment, for the senior member of the firm was a good, honest Dissenter, who, if a trifle narrow and bigoted in his religious views, was sincerely anxious to live up to the light he had. Beyond all question the Sarah Jane was the best-found vessel of her class in the food line that we chaps forrard had ever sailed in. It would have been hard to find a more agreeably surprised little crowd than we were when the first meal appeared in the fo’c’sle, for our preliminary view of the ship certainly gave us the idea that we were in for “plenty pump and velly flat belly,” as a quaint little Italian A. B. said while we were selecting bunks.
But no, she was a comfortable ship. There was certainly “plenty pump,” but the grub was so good that there was never a growl heard among us, and a pleasanter passage out to Algoa Bay than we enjoyed could hardly be imagined. The Sunday services were held, too--that is to say, twice; after that they were quietly dropped without any reason assigned. No one felt sorry, for there was an air of unreality and constraint about the whole thing that was puzzling and unsatisfactory; and on several occasions there was wafted across the poop, as the skipper emerged from the companion, a tantalizing odour which none of us could mistake--the rich bouquet of old Jamaica rum. This gave rise to many discussions in the fo’c’sle. The port watch took sides against the starboard, insisting that the old man had fallen from grace, if, which was problematical, he had ever possessed any of that mysterious quality. We of the starboard, or skipper’s watch, as in duty bound, stood up for him, accounting for the thirst-provoking smell that came wafting upwards from the cabin periodically by the theory of the Sarah Jane having been an old sugar drogher for many years, until her timbers were saturated with the flavour of rum, and, according as the wind tended to diffuse it, we were favoured with it on deck.