CHAPTER II
CAPTAIN STEPHEN MORRIS
“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 figurehead,” 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?”
“Tonight, 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.
“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 figurehead 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 fiber 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 an 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.
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