Harvey"s face flushed, angrily. A feeling that he had been somehow tricked came over him. Ignoring the man"s order, he stepped nearer to him.
"I want to see that chap, Jenkins," he repeated. "He didn"t tell me we were going to sail this way in the night. Where is he?"
The lines about the mouth of Mr. Blake, mate, tightened as he looked the boy over from head to foot. Later experience enlightened Harvey as to what would have happened to him had they been well down the bay. But, as it was, the man merely uttered something softly under his breath. "I"ll leave you for Haley to deal with," was what he said. And he added, in a mollifying tone, addressing Harvey:
"Why, it"s too bad about that young feller, Jenkins. You see he got left.
He slipped up town for some stuff, early this morning-about three o"clock, I guess, and didn"t show up when the tide served for starting.
Scroop wouldn"t wait, and you can"t blame him. But he left word for Jenkins to come down on that boat that lay alongside us. She starts to-morrow. We"ll pick him up down the bay. It"ll be all right. You"re the young feller that Joe told about, eh-going a trip with us?"
The man"s manner, changing thus suddenly from sharp to kindly, was surprising-and a bit comforting, too. Without a companion, even though Jenkins were a chance acquaintance, the venture seemed to have taken on a somewhat different and less pleasing aspect to Harvey.
"Yes," he said, in answer to the mate"s query, "I"m going one trip, just for a month."
"I see," said the mate, quietly. "Well, you"ll like it. You"re the right sort. I can tell that. Ever shipped before?"
Harvey shook his head, as he explained that he had done some bay sailing.
He was about to explain further under what circ.u.mstances, but something made him pause. Under the same sudden impulse-he knew not the reason for it, but obeyed it-he became reticent when Mr. Blake, mate, plied him with questions concerning himself and where he was from.
"I"m just knocking around a bit," he replied, and kept his own counsel. A fortunate thing for him, perhaps, in the light of subsequent events.
The conversation was abruptly broken off. Up from the forecastle there burst three men, clinching in a confused, rough-and-tumble fashion, and struggling together. Had Jack Harvey been on deck the night before, and observed the man who had been carried, sleeping, from the cabin to the forecastle, he might perhaps recognize him now as one of these three.
Somewhat recovered from his condition of stupefaction was he; sufficient to gaze about him wildly, wrestle with the two men who attacked him, strike at them furiously, and cry out several times that he was up to their tricks, that he couldn"t be trapped like a dog and shanghaied down the bay-and let them come on, if they dared.
That they did dare was quite apparent; for they rushed him almost off his feet the next moment. And then, to Harvey"s surprise, he found himself suddenly at service aboard the schooner.
Leaping to his feet, the mate exclaimed, hastily, "Here, you, hold that wheel a minute."
Harvey obeyed. The mate made a few bounds across the deck, took advantage of the opening that offered as the strange man"s back was turned to him, and dealt him a blow behind one ear that felled him, half stunned. The next moment, Harvey saw the three lift the vanquished fighter by head and heels and carry him below again.
Harvey"s heart sank a little. It was hardly an auspicious beginning of a cruise on a strange craft.
Mr. Blake was back again in a few minutes. He was as cool as though nothing unusual had taken place.
"No, you keep the wheel a moment, while I light my pipe," he said, as Harvey started to relinquish the post. Then he laughed, drew forth his pipe and a piece of tobacco, and proceeded to cut a pipeful with his knife.
"That"s Tom Saunders," he said. "Gets foolish drunk the minute he steps on sh.o.r.e; never"s sober except when he"s afloat. Comes aboard a-boilin"
every trip, fights, and makes a mess about being carried off against his will. He"ll straighten out tomorrow and be the best man in the crew."
Harvey felt a bit easier. There had come over him, as he watched the struggle, a feeling that perhaps he, too, had been trapped aboard here.
It was strange, certainly: the disappearance of Mr. Jenkins, and the words the man had just uttered about being shanghaied. However, he was in for the cruise; and come what would, Harvey resolved to make the best of it.
There came aft, presently, the man Scroop, captain of the schooner, whom Harvey eyed curiously, when the mate addressed him.
"Well?" inquired Mate Blake.
Captain Scroop gave vent to a vigorous expletive. "We"ve fixed him!" he said. "He"ll shut up for a while. Hullo, who"s this?"
"A friend of Jenkins," replied the mate, giving a sly wink as he spoke.
Captain Scroop looked at Harvey keenly. Harvey eyed him, eagerly, in return. What he saw was not wholly favourable. Scroop, a hard-featured, shifty-eyed man of middle stature, had not been rendered more prepossessing by his recent encounter. A swelling under one eye showed where the stranger"s fist had landed heavily. His woollen shirt was torn open at the neck, wherein the veins were distended from wrath and excitement. He gave one quick, shifting glance at Harvey and said abruptly, "All right. Get below now and tell Joe to give you breakfast."
Harvey went below.
Captain Scroop turned angrily upon the mate.
"Who got him aboard?" he asked.
"Jenkins-who do you suppose?"
Captain Scroop"s face darkened, and he shook a clenched fist in the direction of Baltimore.
"Won"t he never tell the truth, nohow?" he exclaimed. "Lied to me last night, up and down. Twenty-five years old, or near that, was what he swore. Haven"t I told him not to get these boys? That"s a kid-if he"s seventeen he"s doin" better"n I think. He"s got to go, though. I"ll put him through, now. But wait till we get back. Won"t I settle with somebody? They"ll have the law on us some day."
"Pooh! You"ve said all that a million times," replied the mate, coolly.
"What"s the odds? Aren"t we taking chances, every trip we make? Haven"t we had boys before? Look at the lot of "em we"ve had from New York.
What"s it to us? Leave Haley to work it out. And don"t you go to getting down on Artie Jenkins. He knows his lay. He wouldn"t have shipped this fellow unless he knew it was all right. He"s no fonder of trouble than we are."
Jack Harvey, the innocent subject of the foregoing remarks, was, in the meantime, getting into a better frame of mind. There was no great fault, surely, to be found with the grub aboard the schooner. Nothing that he had ever cooked and eaten at his camp by the sh.o.r.e of Samoset Bay tasted better than the corn flap-jacks handed out from the galley by the boy, Joe. Smeared with a substance, greasy and yellow, but that never was nor ever could be suspected of being b.u.t.ter, and sticky with a blackish liquid that was sweet, like mola.s.ses, they were still appetizing to a hungry youth who had never known the qualms of sea-sickness. A muddy compound, called by extreme courtesy coffee, warmed Harvey to the marrow and put heart in him. A few slices of fried bacon tasted better than the best meal he could have had aboard the ocean liner.
Eating heartily, despite his disappointment to find himself forsaken by Mr. Jenkins, Harvey essayed to draw the boy, Joe, into conversation; but the latter was sullen, and chary of his words.
Would Jenkins surely be down by the next vessel? The boy nodded, somewhat blankly. He guessed so. Where would they begin fishing, and how? Harvey would see, later. And so on. There was clearly little to be gotten from him.
Once there came down into the cabin the same, odd individual who had sat, huddled in the cabin, smoking, the afternoon before. He got a dish of the flap-jacks and a pail of the coffee, and started out again. Harvey fired a question at him, as the man waited a moment to receive his grub.
"How do we fish, down the bay, anyway?" asked Harvey.
The man turned a little, stared at Harvey in a surly manner for a moment, and then-apparently not all in sympathy with methods aboard the schooner and in the trade generally-answered, "Hmph! You breaks yer back at a b.l.o.o.d.y winder." And with this somewhat enigmatical reply, went about his business.
"Say," said Harvey, turning to the boy, once more, "what"s a winder?"
"Why, it"s a-a-winder," responded the boy.
"That"s just what I thought," said Harvey, smiling in spite of his perplexity. "And what"s it for?"
"You get oysters with it," replied the boy. "You heaves the dredge overboard, and you winds it in again."
"Oh, I see," said Harvey, enlightened by this lucid explanation. "It"s a sort of windla.s.s, eh?"
Joe nodded.
"Hard work?" continued Harvey.
"Naw-easy."
But Harvey had his misgivings. And again he comforted himself with the thought, at worst, the cruise would be over and done in a month.
"I guess I"m good for that," he muttered; and went out on deck again.