“Look out there!”
Will Bertram dodged aside as he was walking along the wharf, near where
the Golden Moose lay at anchorage and a broad rope-loop was thrown
around a dock post from a yawl coming ashore.
“Ah, it’s you, my lad,” cried the same hearty voice. “What’s that
you’ve got?” and fat and jolly Jack Marcy, boatswain of the Golden
Moose, clambered ashore and confronted the lad.
“A new figure-head,” explained the latter. “The last one was lost in
the storm.”
“And a great storm it was, boy. Where are you going--down to the ship?”
“Yes; I want to find Captain Morris.”
“Well, you’ll find him in squally temper, I tell you that, but not at
the ship.”
“Where is he, then?”
“At the shipping office down the wharf. Come along, lad, I’ll show the
way and help you, if you don’t mind.”
“It ain’t heavy, Jack,” replied Will, as he trudged along in the
boatswain’s wake. “When does the Moose sail?”
“To-night, up the coast.”
“Oh, how I wish I was going!”
“Don’t I wish it too, lad. We’ve got one youngster on board, but he is
no earthly good, except to get into mischief.”
“Tom Dalton?”
“Exactly; a shiftless, lazy piece of furniture. Here we are, my boy.
I’ll go in first. Hear that; what did I tell you? The captain’s in one
of his tantrums and no mistake.”
They had reached the door of the dilapidated structure where the
shipping office was situated, and as the boatswain pushed it open an
exciting scene was revealed to the vision of the two intruders.
Jack nimbly rounded a desk and got to the other side of the room
unperceived by its occupants, while Will stood staring over the burden
in his arms at Captain Morris and his clerk and general business
manager, Donald Parker.
The latter lay at full length on the floor amid a wreck of the office
furniture.
Glowering down at him, his face alive with brutal rage, was Captain
Morris. He seemed beside himself with passion, and his beard fairly
bristled as he clenched his fists.
[Illustration]
“Say that again,” he shouted, “will you? I’m an imposter, am I? You
know that I lied about the Albatross, do you? You can tell the public
that, where my money came from, eh?”
“Don’t Captain, I didn’t mean anything, sure I didn’t,” pleaded the
prostrate Parker, fearful of a second onslaught.
“You ungrateful scoundrel!” roared Morris, “I’ve a good mind to send
you to jail, where you belong.”
“No, no!” cried the affrighted Parker.
“Yes I have. You might talk too freely. See here, Donald Parker, I
saved you from prison and gave you a snug berth here, and how do you
reward me--threatening to betray my secrets? I trust you no longer. You
get ready to take a voyage with me, and a long one, too. You’re safer
afloat, under my eye.”
“I don’t like the ocean,” whined Parker.
“You’ll like it or go to jail. As to what you pretend to know about the
Albatross and my fortune, you lisp one single word outside and I’ll
make you sorry for it. What do you want?”
Captain Morris directed this question to Will Bertram as he caught
sight of him, but Will’s face was so obscured by the figurehead he did
not at once recognize him.
“I’ve brought the moose head, sir.”
Captain Morris muttered an alarmed interjection under his breath and
sprang to Will’s side.
“See here, you young Paul Pry, how long have you been sneaking around
here listening to other people’s business?”
He seized Will’s shoulder in a cruel grasp as he spoke.
“I don’t sneak around anywhere,” retorted Will in a nettled tone,
smarting under the man’s grip, and wrenching himself free.
Captain Morris scowled fearfully at the boy.
“Well, what do you want?” he demanded. “Oh, the figurehead! Take it to
the ship, do you hear? What business have you to rush in here with it?”
“It’s my business to deliver it to you personally.”
“No sauce, you young Jackanapes. You’d better go slow or I’ll not only
give your father no work, but I’ll put the clamps on him and close him
out. Get out!”
He pushed Will rudely from the threshold and slammed the door in his
face.
“He’s a perfect bear,” murmured Will, indignantly, as he started toward
the ship. “I believed him to be a villain before and I know it now. He
spoke of the Albatross as if there was some secret about it he hadn’t
told. Oh, if I only knew! I will know, if watching and working can
bring it out.”
The Golden Moose was a fine, seaworthy craft, and despite his
unpleasant experience with its owner, Will felt a thrill of pleasure
and interest as he crossed its broad deck.
He delivered the figure-head to the mate and was absorbed for some time
in watching the sailors manipulate the rigging and sails.
There had always been a fascination about shipping for Will Bertram,
and he glanced at a boy about his own age who was greasing some ropes
with positive envy.
“I’d like to take Tom Dalton’s place for a trip or two,” he thought,
but he changed his mind a moment later, as Captain Morris came walking
briskly from the shipping office toward the ship.
At the sight of him the ship’s boy, Tom Dalton, whose head had been
bent over his work, uttered a howl of terror, and, springing to the
rigging, ensconced himself twenty feet from the decks, where he sat
pale and sniveling.
A gloom seemed to come over every man on deck as Captain Morris stepped
aboard. He had a reputation for excessive rudeness and brutality, and
his gleaming eyes and flushed face told that he was half intoxicated
and ugly.
“Aha, you’ve run away, have you?” he yelled at the terrified Tom,
shaking his fist at him; “well, so much the worse for you. I told you
if you went ashore without my permission I’d treat you to the cat of
nine tails, and I mean to keep my word. Come down, there!”
But the cabin boy only broke into wilder sobs and tears.
“Get the whip!” ordered Morris of the mate.
The latter went into the forecastle and returned with the dreaded
instrument of torture with which the cruel captain occasionally
terrorized the delinquent members of the ship’s crew.
Will Bertram shuddered as he took it from the mate’s hand and slashed
it around a mast with a whistling, cutting sound, a look of fiendish
satisfaction on his brutal face.
“Now, Tom Dalton,” he yelled up into the rigging, “it’s ten lashes if
you take your punishment like a man.”
“Oh, captain, let me off, please let me off this time,” cried Tom,
frantically.
“Come down, I tell you.”
“It will kill me--I can’t stand it.”
Captain Morris coolly consulted his watch.
“For every minute you stay up there I’ll give you an extra cut.”
Amid violent moanings and with streaming eyes, the wretched cabin boy
began to slowly descend to the deck.
He shrank back as the captain made a vicious grasp for him, and growled
out:
“Take off your jacket and shirt.”
“Oh, captain; dear captain,” shrieked the unhappy Tom, “for mercy’s
sake not that; oh, please, please, and I’ll never, never disobey the
rules again!”
He groveled at the captain’s feet, he writhed in an agony of fright and
dread torture.
A low murmur of disapprobation swept from the lips of the watching
crew, but not one of them dared to openly manifest his disapproval of
the captain’s course.
Will Bertram alone, boiling over with indignation, murmured audibly,
with flushed face and flashing eyes:
“Shame!”
Captain Morris spurned the suppliant boy with his feet, glowered
defiantly at the sullen faced crew, and then turned fiercely on Will.
“I’ll show you how I punish insolent and disobedient boys, my pert
young friend,” he sneered, malignantly. “Off with your jacket, I tell
you!” he thundered at the half-crazed Tom.
“Don’t let him whip me. Save me, save me!” shrieked the tormented boy,
appealing to the silent sailors.
And then espying Will, he sprang to his side and caught his hand
frantically.
There was not a fibre in Will Bertram’s frame that did not tremble with
indignation. He was overwhelmed with sympathy for the friendless Tom,
and burning with resentment against the brutal Morris.
One sentence, quickly and impulsively, he whispered into Tom’s ear:
“Run for it!”
A suggestion from an outsider, a hope clutched at eagerly, the words
seemed to arouse him to action.
With one bound he was over the rail and on the wharf. Before Captain
Morris could comprehend what had occurred, Tom Dalton was flying down
the wharf like one mad.
“You young jackanapes,” he yelled, advancing with uplifted whip toward
Will, “I’ll teach you to raise a mutiny on my ship.”
“Captain Morris, don’t you dare to strike me.”
Erect, defiant, flinching not one whit, the spirited boy faced the
enraged captain.
“You’ll help my crew to desert, will you? Take that.”
The whip cut the air, but not so quickly but that Will Bertram evaded
its circling stroke.
He leaped aside, and seized the first article for defense that came to
hand.
It proved to be a bucket half full of soft soap with which a sailor had
been washing the decks, but he did not notice that amid his excited
determination to resent Captain Morris’ exercise of authority.
Lifting it threateningly aloft on a level with the captain’s form, he
cried out:
“Don’t you strike me, Captain Morris; I am not your slave, if that poor
boy is.”
“Drop that!”
At the captain’s foaming, rage-filled tones Will Bertram did drop it.
The bucket fell between them. Its contents splattering far and wide,
and trickling over the deck, made the captain retreat summarily.
In so doing the soft, slimy substance gave him a slippery foothold. He
slid forward with a muttered imprecation and fell.
Will Bertram experienced a vague alarm as the captain picked himself up.
From head to foot the soft soap clung to his clothing, while from his
nose and mouth the blood spurted freely.
“I’ve done it,” muttered Will, apprehensively. “I’d better keep out of
his way now.”
It was well that he clambered ashore at that moment, for the captain,
frenzied with rage, was rushing towards the spot where he had stood.
“I’ll make you pay for this!” Will heard him yell as he hurried down
the wharf in the direction Tom Dalton had gone, “I’ll make you and all
your family suffer for this!”
Time proved to Will Bertram how cruelly Captain Morris kept his word.