"Didn't I tell ye if ye'd any complaints to make, to come aft singly and I'd attend to 'em, but that if ye ever came to me in a body I'd not listen to ye ?" "Aye, aye," said Gregory, "but--" "Avast there!" shouted the captain interrupting him.

"When I say a thing I mean a thing; and so ye'd better go forrud again as quick as ye can, or I'll come down and make ye!" An indignant groan burst from the men at this; while "Jock" danced about the poop brandishing a marlinespike he had clutched hold of, in a mighty rage, storming away until the hands had all, very reluctantly, withdrawn grumbling to the forecastle.
In the afternoon, they refused to turn out for duty; when, after a terrible long palaver, in which Mr Mackay managed to smooth down matters, the controversy was settled by all the men having half their meat ration restored to them, and being obliged only to accept a half- pound tin of marmalade in lieu of a larger quantity as previously.

Both sides consequently gained a sort of victory, the only person discontented at this termination of the affair being the steward, Pedro, who took a malicious pleasure in serving out the marmalade each day.

I often caught sight of him watching with a sort of fiendish glee the disappointed faces of the hands as they looked at the open casks of pork and beef, which he somewhat ostentatiously displayed before them, as if to make them long all the more for such substantial fare.
I knew the Portuguese was upset at the amicable end of the difficulty between the captain and crew, for I saw him stealthily awaiting the result, peeping from underneath the break of the poop; and, when the hands raised a cheer in token of their satisfaction at the settlement, he immediately went and locked himself in his pantry, where he began kicking the despised marmalade tins about as if twenty riveters and boiler-makers and hammermen were below! It was very nearly a mutiny, though.
A westerly current being against us as well as the winds light, it took us nearly a week to get up to the thirty-third parallel of latitude, during which time this little unpleasantness occurred; but then, picking up the south-east trades off the Australian coast, we went bowling along steadily again northward for the Straits of Sunda, making for the westwards of the passage so as to be to windward of a strong easterly current that runs through the strait.
I was the first on board to see Java Head, a bluff promontory stretching out into the sea that marks the entrance to Sunda.

This was how it was: we'd got more to the north of the captain's reckoning, and while up in the mizzen cross-trees, in the afternoon of our eighty-fifth day out from land to land, I clearly distinguished the headland far-away in the distance, over our starboard quarter.
"Land ho!" I sang out; "land ho!" "Are you sure ?" cried Captain Gillespie from the deck below looking up at me, when his long nose, being foreshortened, seemed to run into his mouth, giving him the most peculiar appearance.