This squabble terminated amicably enough; but the next day, Monday, a bit of a real row happened on board, which did not end quite so agreeably to one of the persons concerned.
It was a blazing hot day, with the sun like a ball of fire in the heavens above and the sea steaming below with the heat.

The atmosphere was close and hazy, making it so stifling that one could hardly breathe freely--just exactly the sort of weather, in fact, that is met with on the West Coast of Africa at the mouths of some of those pestilential and swampy rivers there that have been the death of so many gallant officers and seamen annually sent to the station for the purpose of putting down the slave-trade and protecting greedy traders in their pursuit of palm- oil and gold dust! During the afternoon of this day, when the sun was about its hottest, making the pitch melt and ooze out from the seams of the deck planking, Davis, who had charge of the starboard watch, came up from below to relieve Mr Marline.
He was late in coming to his post, and I could see he had been drinking, a habit he had lately taken to indulging in, especially after the calm set in; and, as he mounted the poop-ladder, he certainly did not look particularly amiable, for his dark eyes were glaring and his tumbled hair gave him a most ferocious appearance.
The men were mostly doing nothing, lying along the waist under what shelter they could find from the fiery rays of the scorching sun; for, although there was an awning over the poop, there was nothing forwards to shield them from the heat unless they crouched under the lee of the bulwarks and water-casks.
Davis didn't like to see them taking it easy in this fashion, so, catching hold of a marlinespike which someone had left on top of the cabin skylight, he began rapping the rail at the break of the poop with it.
"Come, rouse up there, you lubbers!" he cried.

"I'm not going to allow any caulking in my watch, no matter what the first mate chooses to let you do.

Tumble up!" The men stretched themselves and rose up grumbling, whereupon Davis pitched upon Jackson, who had been asleep under the long-boat and was the last to show a leg, not hearing the second mate's call until a messmate awoke him.
"Hi, you, Jackson!" he roared out.

"I'll give you something to cure your laziness! I'll haze you, I will, you hound! Get a bucket of grease from the cook's caboose and slush the mainmast down." "I'm no hound, sir!" retorted Jackson angrily, drawing himself up to his full height and flaring up angrily at Davis' uncalled-for abuse.