CHAPTER XIV
A FRIEND IN NEED
Land was nowhere in sight, and a chill, frosty air swept the deck of the Golden Moose as its captain confronted his crew with a new surprise.
He vouchsafed no explanation to them of his discovery of the boys, nor did he exhibit at first any curiosity as to how the stowaways had come aboard.
It seemed to be enough to him to know that the former object of his hatred and spite, Tom Dalton, was once more in his power.
Will Bertram had followed the Captain and Tom to the deck. As Morris flung the cabin boy with a violent jerk upon a pile of ropes he growled out, viciously:
“You stay there until I get the cat-of-nine-tails ready!”
Poor Tom crouched and cowered and hid his face in his hands, uttering moans of despair and terror.
Will grew sick at heart as he contemplated the brutal visage of the half-drunken Morris.
He summoned all his courage and boldness, however, and ventured to address him.
“Captain Morris, can I speak a word to you?”
Morris turned with a sneering snarl.
“Ah, my young friend, how humble we are! Our tone ain’t quite as defiant as it was!”
“I want to speak to you about Tom, sir.”
“We’ll clip his wings, and yours, too, before this voyage is ended. You got him to run away. I told you I’d get even with you, and you’ll soon find out how well I keep my word.”
“Captain Morris,” said Will, earnestly, “you have no right to abuse that boy, and you don’t dare to whip me!”
Captain Morris terminated Will’s appeal by going below and reappearing a minute later.
The dreaded instrument of torture, the cat-of-nine-tails, was in his grasp.
His big, brawny hand seized Tom’s jacket and fairly tore it from his back.
He did not wait to have his victim tied up but began slashing at the poor cabin boy with fiendish satisfaction in his evil face.
“Take that, and that. Ah! you squirm, do you!”
“You coward!”
As blow after blow was rained on the shoulders and body of the screaming Tom, his companion could not restrain his indignation and applied the censuring words to Morris.
The latter turned.
“I’ll see if this ship is to be run by boys any longer!” he yelled, choking with rage.
The whip came down across Will’s form with a violence that fairly took his breath away.
He gasped out wildly from the pain inflicted by the cutting strokes.
Suddenly there was an interruption. A hand stronger than that of the Captain clutched the descending whip.
“Don’t strike that boy again, Captain Morris!”
Jack Marcy had stepped forward, and it was he who now spoke.
The Captain directed one amazed glance at him, dumbfounded at the first evidence of rebellion he had ever seen on board the Golden Moose.
“What do you mean?” he demanded, red with anger.
“You ain’t treating these boys right, Captain; that’s what I mean,” said Jack, steadily. “Don’t strike them again.”
“Stand aside!”
“I won’t do it, Captain. You ain’t yourself, or you wouldn’t act this way.”
The Captain struggled to get his hands free, but Jack held him firmly.
“Mutiny!” he roared. “Here,” to the crew, “seize this man and lock him up below.”
Not a sailor stirred to interfere or relieve the Captain from his dilemma.
“Do you hear me?” raved Morris, finally wrenching his hands free. “Well, then, I’ll trounce the whole of you, beginning with you, my mutinous boatswain!”
He struck at Jack Marcy. The blow was not repeated.
Without an indication of anger on his bronzed face, but with a quick step forward, the boatswain lifted his fist and deliberately knocked the Captain down.
Captain Morris arose to his feet with blood in his eye.
“Do you know what you’ve done, you mutinous scoundrel?” he yelled. “Oh, my hearty, you’ll pay dearly for this! To the forecastle! You are no longer an officer on this ship! As to these boys, put them to work,” he ordered to the mate; “and give them plenty of it, and the hardest kind at that!”
Jack Marcy walked up to the Captain and looked him squarely in the eye.
“Captain Morris,” he said, “you’ve relieved me of duty on the ship, well and good; but you leave those boys alone. It ain’t in my nature to see them abused, and I won’t, and there ain’t a man here that don’t stand by me. I’ve sailed with you a long time and did my duty, but I’m through now. You can send me home on a passing ship or land me ashore for mutiny, just as you like. You and I part company this voyage, and that’s the end of it.”
The Captain’s brow darkened.
“I will have you tried for mutiny!” he cried. “As to those boys, they’ll work their passage, I’ll guarantee.”
Captain Morris did not boast vainly. That day and for many days following, Will and Tom were put at the severest drudgery.
Jack Marcy’s position had been given to one of the sailors and he himself was relieved from duty.
Captain Morris did not again exercise any positive cruelty against the boys but saw that they did not idle their time away.
He and the mate seemed to be continually holding mysterious conversations, and more than once the crew discussed the strange course of the ship.
“We seem to be ocean-bound,” Will overheard one of them say one day, “with no definite port in view.”
“He’s going to touch at Nova Scotia and points north, I hear,” remarked another sailor.
One dark night an event occurred which threw some light on the Captain’s action.
Will had been cleaning the lamps in the forward cabin. The weather had been squally all day and had developed into a positive storm at night.
More than once the boatswain had come to the cabin where the captain and mate were, asking for orders, as the ship seemed in positive danger.
The mate went on deck several times, but would return almost immediately, and he and the Captain would resume their confidential talk, drinking freely from a bottle of liquor on the table, in the inner cabin.
They paid no attention to Will, who was in the next compartment to the one they occupied, but they started and looked up, and Will himself aroused curiously as a form came into the cabin and boldly entered on the privacy of the captain and the mate.
It was Jack Marcy, and his face was grim and uncompromising as he faced his superior officers.
Captain Morris scowled darkly.
“What do you want here?” he demanded, gruffly.
“I want to talk with you about this ship. The crew is getting uneasy. They say she is suffering from stress of weather, and that the commanding officers are not doing their duty.”
“What’s that of your business? You are no longer an officer on the ship.”
“Maybe not, Captain Morris, but I happen to know what the men do not. There’s a leak in the hold, and you two are plotting to sink the ship.”
Captain Morris sprang to his feet wildly.
“Are you mad, to make such a statement?” he cried.
“No,” replied Jack, calmly. “I know what I’m talking about. When you left Portland the Golden Moose was heavily insured and charged with a cargo she never carried. I accuse you, Captain Morris, and your mate, of trying to sink the ship in mid-ocean to get that insurance money!”
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