“Then, who is supercargo?”

“Unluckily that greatness has been thrust upon me.  Unluckily, I say; for the office is not one that befits a former fellow of King’s College at Cambridge.  Yet there is an element of good luck in it, too; for, as you know, my fortunes were at a desperately low ebb, and the emoluments of this office, while not great, will stand me in good stead when we reach our destination, and enable me to set you, my dear boy—­to borrow from the vernacular—­on your legs.”

“You have deceived me, then!”

“Nay, nay, you do bear me hard, young man.  To be disappointed is not the same thing as to be deceived.  True, you are not, as I hoped, supercargo, but the conditions are not otherwise altered.  You wished to go to India—­well, Zephyr’s jocund breezes, as Catullus hath it, will waft you thither:  we are flying to the bright cities of the East.  No fragile bark is this, carving a dubious course through the main, as Seneca, I think, puts it.  No, ’tis an excellent vessel, with an excellent captain, who will steer a certain course, who fears not the African blast nor the grisly Hyades nor the fury of Notus—­”

Desmond did not await the end of Diggle’s peroration.  It was then too late to repine.  The vessel was already rounding the Foreland, and though he was more than half convinced that he had been decoyed on board on false pretenses, he could not divine any motive on Diggle’s part, and hoped that his voyage would be not much less pleasant than he had anticipated.

But even before the Good Intent made the Channel he was woefully undeceived.  His first interview with the captain opened his eyes.  Captain Barker was a small, thin, sandy man, with a large upper lip that met the lower in a straight line, a lean nose, and eyes perpetually bloodshot.  His manner was that of a bully of the most brutal kind.  He browbeat his officers, cuffed and kicked his men, in his best days a martinet, in his worst a madman.  The only good point about him was that he never used the cat, which, as Bulger said, was a mercy.

“Humph!” he said when Desmond was presented to him.  “You’re him, are you?  Well, let me tell you this, my lad:  the ship’s boy on board this ’ere ship have got to do what he’s bid, and no mistake about it.  If he don’t, I’ll make him.  Now, you go for’ard into the galley and scrape the slush off the cook’s pans; quick’s the word.”

From that day Desmond led a dog’s life.  He found that as ship’s boy he was at the beck and call of the whole company.  The officers, with the exception of Mr. Toley, the melancholy first mate, took their cue from the captain; and Mr. Toley, as a matter of policy, never took his part openly.  The men resented his superior manners and the fact that he was socially above them.  The majority of the seamen were even more ruffianly than the specimens he had seen at the Waterman’s Rest—­the scum of Wapping and Rotherhithe.  His only real friend on board was Bulger, who helped him to master the many details of a sailor’s work, and often protected him against the ill treatment of his mates; and, in spite of his one arm, Bulger was a power to be reckoned with.