Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale by Robin Lloyd

swaying mast the colder he felt. He held on tightly to the shrouds from his precarious perch, more than eighty feet above the deck on the three-foot-wide crosstrees. There he was able to set down the slush pail and gather his strength.
    Mr. Brown sent Hiram up to help him. The two cabin boys were busy slathering the masts with the thick grease when they first heard a commotion below them on deck. It sounded like a fight. They had worked their way down the mast so that they were now perched just below the upper topsail yard, about fifty feet from the deck. They could hear stomping and an angry voice shouting, “I’ll give you the toe of my boot and knock you all the way into the middle of next week.”
    “What’s going on, Hiram?”
    “Sounds like Mr. Brown is having a frolic with one of the sailors,” Hiram replied dryly. Morgan looked down through the spiderweb of the rigging until he spied the blue pea jacket and the black leather hat of the second mate, hurling abuse at a big sailor and shouting into his face.
    “Answer me, you great white monkey!” he yelled as he rained blow after blow on the big man’s back with the belaying pin. Morgan could recognize the sailor by his yellow hair tied back in a ponytail. He was a great hulk of a man with wide and broad shoulders, a big square face with thin whiskers, pale blue eyes, and thin lips that rarely smiled. His name was Olaf Rasmussen. Everyone just called him Icelander because that’s where he was supposedly from. The story was he’d gone to sea because he’d killed a man, or at least that’s what some of the crew whispered behind his back.
    Morgan watched, mesmerized as the shipboard drama unfolded directly underneath him. Another sailor came to Icelander’s defense, a small dark-haired man who spoke little English named Luis Ochoa. He was known as the Spaniard. He was a man near thirty, thin and bronze-skinned with a drooping black moustache and heavily tattooed arms. Morgan had already heard about his reputation of being quick with a knife. Some of the other sailors claimed he had once been a pirate sailing out of Havana. The ship’s officers didn’t like these two foreigners. Some of the river men took a special dislike to sailors who weren’t from New England.
    The second mate was striking both men now. Morgan could see the flat top of his hat and the thrashing motion of the belaying pin. Suddenly, the Spaniard drew his sheath knife and was about to lunge at Mr. Brown. Morgan held his breath and began to panic as he felt the rope holding the slush bucket slipping out of his grasp. Hiram had warned him that this could happen. He tried in vain to wrap it around his wrist, but his hands and arms were thick with grease and the rope kept slipping. He knew he couldn’t hold it any longer.
    “Hiram, help me!” Morgan cried out. “It’s slipping! The bucket, it’s falling!”
    Hiram was on the other side of the mast, but he was quick to react as he saw the impending disaster unfolding. He stepped over to Morgan’s side and sidled toward him, being careful to keep one hand on the shrouds. Morgan reached for the rope with his other hand, but he lost his balance, and started to fall backward. Hiram was close enough to grab him by his belt while he held onto the rigging with the other hand. Morgan was now precariously hanging in the air, his hands frantically trying to grab the shrouds, his feet barely touching the ratlines. By this time, the bucket with its foul and greasy contents was in free fall. The slobbery mess landed on top of the unsuspecting second mate’s head like generous dollops of pig fat on a skillet. The bucket hit the mate squarely on the shoulder. The blow was enough to knock him down onto the deck.
    Hiram called out for help. His hand on Morgan’s belt was beginning to slip.
    “Hurry!” Hiram yelled. “I can’t hold on much longer.”
    Like a nimble monkey, the wiry Spaniard was the first up the mast, climbing around the futtock