14 DICK SANDS, THE BOY CAPTAIN. CHAPTER II THE APPRENTICE. There was no poop upon the " Pilgrîm*s " deck, so that Mrs. Weldon had no alternative than to acquiesce in the captain's proposai that she should occupy his own modest cabin. Accord ingly, hère she was installed with Jack and old Nan ; and hère she took ail her meals, in company with the captain and Cousin Benedict For Cousin Benedict tolerably comfortable sleeping- accommodation had been contrived close at hand, while Captain Hull himself retired to the crew's quarter, occupy- ing the cabin which properly belonged to the chief mate, but as already indicated, the services of a second officer were quite dispensed with. Ail the crew were civil and attentive to the wife of their employer, a master to whom they were faithfully attached. They were ail natives of the coast of California, brave and experienced seamen, and united by tastes and habits in a common bond of sympathy. Few as they were in number, their work was never shirked, not simply from the scnsc of duty, but because they were directly interestcd in the profits of their undertaking ; the success of their labours always told to their own advantage. The présent expédition was the fourth that they had taken together ; and, as it turned out to be the first in which they had failed to meet with success, it may be imagined that they were full of resentment against the mutinous whalemen who had been the cause of so serious a diminution of their ordinary gains.
