The brute, to end the story, was eaten up at once by his affectionate comrades, the sea being dyed red with his blood.
We had not all leisure, though, thus hanging about the Equator under the scorching sun, now at noon precisely perpendicular over our heads, the heat at night too being almost as stifling and the stars as bright as moons; for Captain Gillespie took advantage of our inaction to "set up" the rigging, which had slackened considerably since we entered the tropics, the heat making the ropes stretch so that our masts got loose and the upper spars canted.
While doing this, of course, I had another practical lesson in seamanship, learning all about "double luffs" and "toggles," "salvagee strops" and "Burton tackles," and all the rest of such gear, whose name is legion.
But I must go on now to a more important incident.
One morning, about a week after the wind left us, with the exception of an occasional cat's-paw of air which came from every point of the compass in turn, we ultimately drifted to the Line; accomplishing this by the aid of the swell ever rolling southward and the eddy of the great south equatorial current, setting between the African continent and the Caribbean Sea.

This meets the Guinea current running in the opposite direction in the middle of the Doldrums, and helps to promote the pleasant stagnation, of wind and water and of air alike, of this delightful region so dear to mariners! I recollect the morning well; for the night was unusually oppressive, the heat between the middle watch and eight bells having been more intense than at any period, I thought, during the week.
So, after tossing about my bunk, unable to get to sleep I was only too glad when the time came to turn out for duty, the task of washing decks and paddling about in the cool water--for it was cool at the earlier hours of the morning if tepid at noon--being something to look forward to.
I forgot, however, all about the terrible rites of Neptune for those crossing the Line for the first time, and neither Tom Jerrold nor Weeks, naturally, enlightened me on the subject; so that I was completely taken by surprise when a loud voice hailed us from somewhere forward, just about "four bells," as if coming from out of the sea.
"What ship is that ?" "The Silver Queen," answered Mr Saunders, who was on the poop and of course in the joke, answering the voice, which although portentously loud, had a familiar ring about it suspiciously like Tim Rooney's Irish brogue.

"Bound from London to Shanghai." "Have ye minny of me unshaved sons aboard ?" "Aye, two," shouted back Mr Saunders, "a stowaway and an apprentice." "Ye spake true," returned the voice.

"I knows 'em both, Misther Allan Gray-ham an' Joe Fergusson.

I will come aboard an' shave 'em." Then it all flashed upon me, and I tried to run below and hide; but two of Neptune's tritons seized me and pushed me forward to where the boatswain, capitally got up in an oakum wig with an enormous tow beard, was seated on the windlass, trident in hand.