Fortunately, nothing but rumors of the fight got aft. Scouse was well beaten, and came to in his bunk, after Australia and Brenden had doused him with salt water. Joe was badly battered up, and both men carried "shiners." As Jimmy Marshall said, "Honors is even, but it was a wery wery ragged fight."
The mate next morning greeted the watch with a broad grin, and the story of the mill, told to the starboard watch by their lookout Tommy, lost nothing in the telling. As for the port watch, we were glad it was over and once again the atmosphere below returned to normal. A few nights later Joe and Scouse chummed together, and from that day to the night in Honolulu, when Joe deserted and went out on the barkentine _Irmgard_ to Frisco, he and Scouse were inseparable.
We were then in about five degrees of North Latitude, the trades had failed us, and the doldrums claimed their share of bracing and hauling, giving us little time for any other work. Every ripple on the brazen sea called for a different angle of the yards, and in dead calm we lay with our head yards braced sharp up and the after yards square, the courses guyed out from the masts by slap lines and bowlines. During the day a vertical sun beat down on our bare deck in unmerciful fashion, lifting the scorching pitch from the seams and all but addling our senses with the heat. The mates became more and more exacting, every job palled, and the stuffy, unpalatable food of the fo'c'sle stuck in our throats. The vessel was a chip of hell floating on the unforgiving ocean; riveted for days, that stretched to weeks, amid the patches of rusty sea weed, a thousand feet across, that tangled about the rudder post, great sun-scorched fragments of the dead Sargasso Sea.
And all of this time we knew that the Southern branch of the Equatorial Current was sending us back to the W. N. W. at the rate of several miles a day!
In watch below, choking with the heat, we lay tossing sleeplessly in our bunks while the sickly smell of the bilges came up from the fore peak through the wind sails let down to ventilate the hold. Cockroaches throve in added millions, and we were treated to our first rations of weevily tack. The little white worms seemed to be everywhere. The cracker hash was riddled with them as Chow selected the rottenest bread for this purpose. Most of us developed boils, and the dark brown taste, left by the vile food, resulted in a general loss of appetite. The heat even forced the rats from the hold and on a dark night we could hear them scampering about under the fo'c'sle head. The healthy sea tan of the temperate zone left our faces, and we became peevish and morose.