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And so, with a crippled crew of schooner sailors, the square-rigger Almena was towed to sea, smoldering rebellion in one end of her, the power of the law in the other–murder in the heart of every man on board.

PART II

Five months later the Almena lay at an outer mooring-buoy in Callao Roads, again ready for sea, but waiting. With her at the anchorage were representatives of most of the maritime nations. English ships and barks with painted ports and spider-web braces, high-sided, square-sterned American half-clippers, clumsy, square-bowed “Dutchmen,” coasting-brigs of any nation, lumber-schooners from “‘Frisco,” hide-carriers from Valparaiso, pearl-boats and fishermen, and even a couple of homesick Malay proas from the west crowded the roadstead; for the guano trade was booming, and Callao prosperous. Nearly every type of craft known to sailors was there; but the postman and the policeman of the seas–the coastwise mail-steamer and the heavily sparred man-of-war–were conspicuously absent. The Pacific Mail boat would not arrive for a week, and the last cruiser had departed two days before.

Beyond the faint land- and sea-breeze, there was no wind nor promise of it for several days; and Captain Benson, though properly cleared at the custom-house for New York, was in no hurry, and had taken advantage of the delay to give a dinner to some captains with whom he had fraternized on shore. “I’ve a first-rate steward,” he had told them, “and I’ll treat you well; and I’ve the best-trained crew that ever went to sea. Come, all of you, and bring your first officers. I want to give you an object-lesson on the influence of matter over mind that you can’t learn in the books.”

So they came, at half-past eleven, in their own ships’ dinghies, which were sent back with orders to return at nightfall–six big-fisted, more or less fat captains, and six big-fisted, beetle-browed, and embarrassed chief mates. As they climbed the gangway they were met and welcomed by Captain Benson, who led them to the poop, the only dry and clean part of the ship; for the Almena’s crew were holystoning the main-deck, and as this operation consists in grinding off the oiled surface of the planks with sandstone, the resulting slime of sand, oily wood-pulp, and salt water made walking unpleasant, as well as being very hard on polished shoe-leather. But in this filthy slime the men were on their knees, working the six-inch blocks of stone, technically called “bibles,” back and forth with about the speed and motion of an energetic woman over a wash-board.

The mates also were working. With legs clad in long rubber boots, they filled buckets at the deck-pump and scattered water around where needed, occasionally throwing the whole bucketful at a doubtful spot on the deck to expose it to criticism. As the visitors lined up against the monkey-rail and looked down on the scene, Mr. Becker launched such a bucketful as only a second mate can–and a man who happened to be in the way was rolled over by the unexpected impact. He gasped a little louder than might have been necessary, and the wasting of the bucketful of water having forced Mr. Becker to make an extra trip to the pump, the officer was duly incensed.

“Get out o’ the way, there,” he bawled, eying the man sternly. “What are you gruntin’ at? A little water won’t hurt you–soap neither.”

He went to the pump for more water, and the man crawled back to his holystone. It was Bigpig Monahan, hollow-eyed and thin, slow in his voluntary movements; minus his look of injury, too, as though he might have welcomed the bowling over as a momentary respite for his aching muscles.

Now and then, when the officers’ faces were partly turned, a man would stop, rise erect on his knees, and bend backward. A man may work a holystone much longer and press it much harder on the deck for these occasional stretchings of contracted tissue; but the two mates chose to ignore this physiological fact, and a moment later, a little man, caught in the act by Mr. Jackson, was also rolled over on his back, not by a bucket of water, but by the boot of the mate, who uttered words suitable to the occasion, and held his hand in his pocket until the little man, grinning with rage, had resumed his work.