bags piled in the bows, he would undo the morning's work
and put us to 'stand-by' jobs on the rigging. There were other loaded
ships in as bad a plight as we. The _Drumeltan_ was eight hands short
of her crew of twenty-six, and the Captain of the _Peleus_ was
considering the risk of setting off for the Horn, short-handed by
three. Sailors' wages were up to thirty and thirty-five dollars a
month, and at that (nearly the wage of a Chief Mate of a 'limejuicer')
there were no proper able seamen coming forward. Even the 'hobos' and
ne'er-do-weels, who usually flock at 'Frisco on the chance of getting a
ship's passage out of the country, seemed to be lying low.

One evening the ship _Blackadder_ came in from sea. She was from the
Colonies; had made a long passage, and was spoken of as an extra
'hungry' ship--and her crew were in a proper spirit of discontent. She
anchored near us, and the Old Man gazed longingly at the fine stout
colonials who manned her. He watched the cat-boats putting off from
the shore, and smiled at the futile attempts of the ship's Captain and
Mates to keep the 'crimps' from boarding. If one was checked at the
gangway, two clambered aboard by the head, and the game went merrily on.

"Where's she from, Mister?" said the Old Man to the Mate who stood with
him. "Did ye hear?"

"Newcastle, New South Wales, I heard," said Mr. Hollins. "Sixty-five
days out, the butcher said; him that came off with the stores this
morning."

"Sixty-five, eh! Thirty o' that for a 'dead horse,' an' there'll be
about six pound due the men; a matter o' four or five pound wi' slop
chest an' that! They'll not stop, Mister, damn the one o' them' ...
Ah, there they go; there they go!" Sailors' bags were being loaded
into the cat-boats. It was the case of:

_The grub was bad, an' th' wages low,_
_An' it's time--for us--t' leave 'r!_

"Good business for us, anyway," said the Old Man, and told the Mate to
get his windlass ready for 'heaving up' in the morning.

Alas! he left the other eager shipmasters out of his count. The
Captain of the _Drumeltan_ raised the 'blood-money' to an unheard-of
sum, and two days later towed out to sea, though the wind was W.S.W.
beyond the Straits--a 'dead muzzler'!

A big American ship--the _J. B. Flint_--was one of the fleet of
'waiters.' She was for China. 'Bully' Nathan was Captain of her (a
man who would have made the starkest of pirates, if he had lived in
pirate tim