I do not want to get into the sailor fashion of using strong terms about trifles, but to call him less than wicked would be to insult goodness, and if brutality makes a brute, he was brute enough in all conscience! Being short-handed at Bermuda, we had shipped a wretched little cabin-boy of Portuguese extraction, who was a native of Demerara, and glad to work his passage there, and the mate's systematic ill-treatment of this poor lad was not less of a torture to us than to Pedro himself, so agonizing was it to see, and not dare to interfere; all we could do was to aid him to the best of our power on the sly.
The captain, though a sneaking, unprincipled kind of man, was neither so brutal nor, unfortunately, so good a seaman as the mate; and the consequence of this was, that the mate was practically the master, and indulged his Snuffy-like passion for cruelty with impunity, and with a double edge.

For, as he was well aware, in ill-treating Pedro he made us suffer, and we were all helpless alike.
His hold over the captain was not from superior seamanship alone.

The _Water-Lily_ was nominally a "temperance" vessel, but in our case this only meant that no rum was issued to the crew.

In the captain's cabin there was plenty of "liquor," and the captain occasionally got drunk, and each time that he did so, the influence of the mate seemed riveted firmer than before.

Crews are often divided in their allegiance, but the crew of the _Water-Lily_ were of one mind.