CHAPTER XIII
THE SEA SERPENT
When a new crew is shipped on an old vessel, the mate's first duty is to
search the sailors' dunnage for whiskey; when an old crew is shipped on
a new vessel, that officer would do well to search the vessel for rum.
Madden had neglected this. While the American was in the engine room,
the cockneys in the cook's galley had found intoxicants, had poured raw
whiskey into their empty stomachs and the result was the quickest and
most complete intoxication. When Madden regained the deck he found his
crew singing, laughing, fighting, quarreling in an absurd medley.
Deschaillon roared out a French song. Two cockneys quarreled bitterly
over what words he was saying. Mike Hogan jigged to the Frenchman's
tune, but shouted as he danced that he was spoiling for a fight. The
smell of spirits reeked over the tug as if someone had sprinkled her
deck with liquor.
Madden looked with anxious eyes for Caradoc, but did not see him. Smith
was probably stuck away in some hole, senseless with poison, his effort
at sobriety frustrated, his moral courage shattered, his weeks of
painful reform smashed.
Whatever humor there might have been in the ill-starred situation was
destroyed for Madden by his friend's moral relapse. It was much as if
some invalid, nursing a broken leg, should fall and break it over again.
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