and amongst
the former Captain Miles, her master, a sturdy old sea-dog of forty-five
or thereabouts, is entitled to be the first described. He had a broad
honest face, with a pair of bushy, reddish-brown mutton-chop whiskers,
for, unlike the sailors of to-day, the captain was always clean shaven
as to his chin and upper lip, esteeming a moustache an abomination,
"which only one of those French Johnny Crapaud lubbers ever think of
wearing."

The next officer in rank after Captain Miles was Mr Marline, the first
mate, a thin wiry north countryman, with a lot of latent fun and dry
humour in him; and then came Davis, the second mate, a thick-set bull-
necked dark-haired Welshman, not more than twenty-four or five years of
age. He had been promoted from the foremast on account of his
predecessor having died on the passage out. Davis was a very good
seaman and up to his work; otherwise, his education being sadly
deficient, as even I, a boy, could perceive, and his temper and
disposition being none of the best, he was certainly not very well
fitted to command those with whom he had formerly associated as an
equal.

My old friend Moggridge, the boatswain, and Adze, the carpenter,
completed the list of those in authority; and, besides these, must be
enumerated Cuffee, the king of the cook's galley; Jake, who had been put
on the muster-roll as an ordinary hand; Harry, the captain's tawny
mulatto steward; and ten able seamen--the finest and strongest of all
these being Jackson, a smart young Cornishman hailing from Plymouth, who
stood some six feet two in his stockings and gloried in such a broad
pair of shoulders that he was worth any three of the other hands put
together.

To complete the description of our ship, the lower portion of our cargo,
stowed in the ground tier of the hold above the dunnage, was sugar and
coffee, with some odd bags of cocoa from my father's plantation to make
weight; but our chief freight, fortunately for us, as you will learn
later on, was rum. The puncheons containing this were packed as tightly
as possible fore and aft the ship above the heavy produce, reaching up
amidships to the level of the main hatch, all the spaces between being
so compactly filled in with the lighter samples of cargo that not even a
cockroach could have squeezed itself in sideways.

In the waist of the vessel on the upper deck, ranged along the inside of
the bulwarks on either hand, from the entrance to the cabin unde