"Right you are, Davie!" a higher, thinner voice proclaimed, "right you are.
I was having my future told, I was, and the lady—"
A roar of laughter drowned the words of the luckless second speaker, and some one yelled vociferously, "Neddie the fortune-teller! Don't tell me he's shipped with us again!"
"But I tell you," Neddie persisted shrilly, "I tell you they hit it right, they do, often. And the lady, she says, 'Neddie Benson, don't you go reckless on this next voyage. There's trouble in store,' she says. 'There'll be a dark man and a light man, and a terrible danger.' And I paid the lady two dollars and I—"
Again laughter thundered in the forecastle.
"All the same," the deep-voiced Davie growled, "that sly, slippery—"
"Hist!" A man raised his hand against the light that came faintly from on deck.
Then a mild voice asked, "What are you men quidding about anyway? One of you's sitting on my chest."
"Listen to them talk," some one close beside me whispered. "You'd think this voyage was all of life, the way they run on about it. Now it don't mean so much to me. My name's Bill Hayden, and I've got a little wee girl, I have, over to Newburyport, that will be looking for her dad to come home. Two feet long she is, and cute as they make them."
Aware that the speaker was watching me closely, I perfunctorily nodded. At that he edged nearer. "Now I'm glad we're in the same watch," he said. "So many men just cut a fellow off with a curse."
I observed him more sharply, and saw that he was a stupid-looking but rather kindly soul whose hair was just turning gray.
"Now I wish you could see that little girl of mine," he continued. "Cute? there ain't no word to tell you how cute she is. All a-laughing and gurgling and as good as gold. Why, she ain't but a little old, and yet she can stand right up on her two little legs as cute as you please."
I listened with mild interest as he rambled on. He seemed such a friendly, homely soul that I could but regard him more kindly than I did some of our keener-witted fellow seamen.
Now we heard faintly the bell as it struck, clang-clang, clang-clang, clang-clang. Feet scuffled overhead, and some one called down the hatch, "Eight bells, starbow-lines ahoy!"
Davie's deep voice replied sonorously, "Ay-ay!" And one after another we climbed out on deck, where the wind from the sea blew cool on our faces.
I had mounted the first rung of the ladder, and was regularly signed as a member of the crew of the Island Princess, bound for Canton with a cargo of woolen goods and ginseng. There was much that puzzled me aboard-ship—the discontent of the second mate, the perversity of the man Kipping (others besides myself had seen that wink), and a certain undercurrent of pessimism. But although I was separated a long, long way from my old friends in the cabin, I felt that in Bill Hayden I had found a friend of a sort; then, as I began my first real watch on deck at sea, I fell to thinking of my sister and Roger Hamlin.
CHAPTER III
THE MAN OUTSIDE THE GALLEY
Strange events happened in our first month at sea—events so subtle as perhaps to seem an unimportant part of this narrative of a strange voyage, yet really as necessary to the foundation of the story as the single bricks and the single dabs of mortar at the base of a tall chimney are necessary to the completed structure. I later had cause to remember each trivial incident as if it had been written in letters of fire.
In the first dog watch one afternoon, when we were a few days out of port, I was sitting with my back against the forward deck-house, practising splices and knots with a bit of rope that I had saved for the purpose. I was only a couple of feet from the corner, so of course I heard what was going on just out of sight.
The voices were low but distinct.
"Now leave me alone!" It was Bill Hayden who spoke. "I ain't never troubled you."
"Ah, so you ain't troubled me, have you, you whimpering old dog?"
"No, I ain't troubled you."
"Oh, no! You was so glad to let me take your nice dry boots, you was, when mine was filled with water."
The slow, mild, ostensibly patient voice could be none other than
Kipping's.
"I had to wear 'em myself."
"Oh, had to wear 'em yourself, did you?"
"Let go o' my arm!"
"So?"
"Let go, I tell you; let go or I'll—I swear I'll hammer you good."
"Oh, you'll hammer me good, will you?"
"Let go!"
There was a sudden scuffle, then out from the corner of the deck-house danced Kipping with both hands pressed over his jaw.
"You bloody scoundrel!" he snarled, meek no longer. "You wait—I'll get you. I'll—" Seeing me sitting there with my bit of rope, he stopped short; then, with a sneer, he walked away.
Amazed at the sudden departure of his tormentor, Bill Hayden stuck his own head round the corner and in turn discovered me in my unintentional hiding-place.
Bill, however, instead of departing in chagrin, joined me with a puzzled expression on his kind, stupid face.
"I don't understand that Kipping," he said sadly. "I've tried to use him right. I've done everything I can to help him out and I'm sure I don't want to quarrel with him, yet for all he goes around as meek as a cat that's been in the cream, he's always pecking at me and pestering me, till just now I was fair drove to give him a smart larrup."
Why, indeed, should Kipping or any one else molest good, dull old Bill
Hayden?
"I'm a family man, I am," Bill continued, "with a little girl at home. I ain't a-bothering no one. I'm sure all I want is to be left alone."
For a time we sat in silence, watching the succession of blue waves through which the Island Princess cut her swift and almost silent passage. A man must have been a cowardly bully to annoy harmless old Bill. Yet even then, young though I was, I realized that sometimes there is no more dangerous man than a coward and a bully, "He's great friends with the second mate," Bill remarked at last. "And the second mate has got no use at all for Mr. Thomas because he thought he was going to get Mr. Thomas's berth and didn't; and for the same reason he don't like the captain. Well, I'm glad he's only second mate. He ain't got his hands out of the tar-bucket yet, my boy."
"How do you know he expected to get the mate's berth?" I asked.
"It's common talk, my boy. The supercargo's the only man aft he's got any manner of use for, and cook says the steward says Mr. Hamlin ain't got no manner of use for him. There you are."
"No," I thought—though I discreetly said nothing—"Roger Hamlin is not the man to be on friendly terms with a fellow of the second mate's calibre."
And from that time on I watched Mr. Falk, the second mate, and the mild-voiced Kipping more closely than ever—so closely that one night I stumbled on a surprising discovery.
Ours was the middle watch, and Mr. Falk as usual was on the quarter-deck. By moonlight I saw him leaning on the weather rail as haughtily as if he were the master. His slim, slightly stooped figure,