“There were only a few antique-looking dows,” continued the mate, “the grab-brig and one Arab man-of-war moored in the gap where we lay, which, in my opinion—melted out of me, as I may say—is the hottest place in the round world in the same parallel of latitude; being shut in by a wall of glaring granite—two hundred feet high—on one hand, and a rampart of rough rocks—rising high above the Tartar’s royal truck—on the other. You hardly felt a breath of air come on deck when you might; and it really seemed to grow hotter and hotter, as the disease spread in the town; the sky, all the time, like glowing steel by day, and so clear and close at night, that you turned away from the stars and the sickening light of the moon, longing, as you panted for breath, for the least mutter of thunder.
“However, it was some comfort that as yet the disease had not boarded the craft.
“The Tartar was on old ship, as rickety as a county bridge of our grandsires’ times, though having been a regular tea-wagon in her best days, she had known little crowding and banging. There was still a deal of wear and tear in her leewardly black hull, though I couldn’t say much for its model, which was as near like one of those large Pennsylvania wagons as might be, considering that one was rigged for crossing the seas, and the other the mountains. She had a respectable look, however, if it were only for her size, with her ten gun-ports on a side, her high rails, and a whale-boat on each bow, waist and quarter, except the larboard one, where the mate’s had hung. She was well sparred, her standing rigging being entirely new that voyage, and her ground-tackle of the very best. I noticed this from the first, not dreaming at the moment, that I should have greater cause to remember it afterward. She had two cabins between decks, both of which, as I understood, had been occupied by the captain and his deceased wife—the mates sleeping in the house under the poop, while the boat-steerers, as is the custom in these ships, messed in the steerage. The mulatto steward, who had been several voyages with the captain, slung his hammock in the sail-room. Since the unfortunate death of the lady, the after-cabin had been closed, the doors being locked, and the keys, as I was told, in the steward’s possession. The long cabin in which we dined, and which was separated from the steerage by an unusually strong bulk-head partition, had two small sleeping-berths in it, and over each of which was a star of pistols. A number of boarding-pikes and ship’s cutlasses were ranged round the mast, and a double stand of short muskets gave the midship bulk-head—set off as it was with a few _krungars_[4] and Malayan kreeses—a very warlike appearance. In the sail-room, which was partitioned off from the for’ard cabin, were ranged in order, in their sheaths, the instruments used in capturing and cutting up the whale, consisting of harpoons, long steel-headed lances, fluke-spades, two-edged boarding-knives, and heavy cutting-spades, all kept in excellent order. In showing these implements to me, the second-mate remarked that, as their legitimate work was done for that voyage, it was well enough to have them under his eye, particularly as there were several desperate characters in the ship.