the name was
moniment-like, you see. He used to seem cut up a bit about it at first,
for the lads took to it famously; but he got used to it in a week or
two, and, seeing as they meant him no unkindness, took it quite cheery.

One other thing I noticed was that he never had the book about after
that. He fell into our ways next Sunday more easy.

They don't take the Bible just the way you would, Tom,--as a general
thing, sailors don't; though I will say that I never saw the man at sea
who didn't give it the credit of being an uncommon good yarn.

But I tell you, Tom Brown, I felt sorry for that boy. It's punishment
bad enough for a little scamp like him leaving the honest shore, and
folks to home that were a bit tender of him maybe, to rough it on a
trader, learning how to slush down a back-stay, or tie reef-points with
frozen fingers in a snow-squall.

But that's not the worst of it, by no means. If ever there was a
cold-blooded, cruel man, with a wicked eye and a fist like a mallet, it
was Job Whitmarsh, taken at his best. And I believe, of all the trips
I've taken, him being mate of the Madonna, Kentucky found him at his
worst. Bradley--that's the second mate--was none too gentle in his ways,
you may be sure; but he never held a candle to Mr. Whitmarsh. He took a
spite to the boy from the first, and he kept it on a steady strain to
the last, right along, just about so.

I've seen him beat that boy till the blood ran down in little pools on
deck; then send him up, all wet and red, to clear the to'sail halliards;
and when, what with the pain and faintness, he dizzied a little, and
clung to the ratlines, half blind, he would have him down and flog him
till the cap'n interfered,--which would happen occasionally on a fair
day when he had taken just enough to be good-natured. He used to rack
his brains for the words he slung at the boy working quiet enough
beside him. It was odd, now, the talk he would get off. Bob Smart
couldn't any more come up to it than I could: we used to try sometimes,
but we had to give in always. If curses had been a marketable article,
Whitmarsh would have taken out his patent and made his fortune by
inventing of them, new and ingenious. Then he used to kick the lad down
the fo'castle ladder; he used to work him, sick or well, as he wouldn't
have worked a dray-horse; he used to chase him all about deck at the
rope's end; he used to mast-head him for hours on the stretch; he used
to starve him