He turned from the rail and went below. Stanistreet saw the steward come along with breakfast things—the Ranatonga had a deck galley—and vanish down the cabin hatch. Then he heard the voice of a child and the voice of the steward as if talking to it.
Then Bowers rose like a sea elephant from the fo’c’sle and came along the deck. Bowers had handed over the wheel to Peterson just before Lestrange came up. He had dodged below to light a pipe, risen to see Lestrange and Stanistreet in confabulation and then lain doggo, waiting.
“How’s the gentleman taking it now, sir?” asked Bowers, speaking in a lowered voice. “I popped my head up when you was talkin’ and he looked to have got back to his self.”
“God help me, I don’t know,” said Stanistreet; “but if there’s any sense in the world he’s gone crazy, plain crazy—but he’s happy.”
“Well, thank the Lord he’s gone the laughin’, not the howlin’ kind,” said Bowers. “Happy, is he? Well, it’s fortunit for him. That’s all I have to say.”
“Maybe. Anyhow, dodge down, will you, and bring up that kid. The steward’s fooling with it and wasting his time, and I want to see it on deck—after-bunk you’ll find it.”
Bowers dived.
A minute later he reappeared with the “kid” wrapped in a bunk blanket and clasped in one huge arm.
Plump, brown as a berry, auburn-haired and laughing, it was a very different child from the child that had come aboard yesterday.
“It pulled me beard,” said Bowers. “It’s as strong as Ham, b’gosh.—There, out you get and play in the sun, where you used to.”
He turned the naked child out of the blanket on to the deck. “Called me Dick as I was comin’ up with him,” said Bowers, now on his knees beside it, tickling it and rolling it over with his huge hand. “Called me Dick, did you—where’s your pants? Eh? Where’s your pants, you little devil, sold them, did you?—Hand’s a belaying pin, sir, till I knock the brains out of him.”
Stanistreet handed the pin.
“Now,” said Bowers, putting it in the two hands of the child, “bang the deck and be happy.”
He had no need to give directions.
“Well, sir, what do you think of that?” said the sailor, rising to his feet. “Looked like dying of wantin’ to go to sleep yesterday afternoon, and hark at it now!”
“It’s a fine kid,” said Stanistreet, contemplating it. “I’d make it to be getting on for two years, but I’m no judge of children. But I’ll tell you what, Bowers; it’s my opinion it wasn’t so much asleep when we got it aboard as doped. Did you see that sprig of a tree lying in the dinghy? Well, I’ll bet my hat that was arita. I’ve seen the stuff growing in some of the islands and it’s more poisonous than oap; a couple of berries will do for any man. I believe those two ate some of the berries, not knowing what they were, maybe, and maybe the child took the poison through the mother’s milk. I’m dead sure that’s how the thing went, for them two showed no signs of dying of starvation or thirst and they’d come a long way.”
“Maybe,” said Bowers, his eyes on the child. “Now then, now then, where are you rollin’ that pin to?—Come out of it or you’ll be tumblin’ down the hatch—God’s truth, I’ll have to hobble you before I’ve done with you.”
He was leading the child away from the companion hatch, when Lestrange reappeared and joined Stanistreet near the wheel. Lestrange glanced at the sailor and his charge but seemed to take little interest in it, or only that benign interest which he seemed, now, to bestow on everything animate and inanimate; it might have been the child of Bowers for all he seemed to care. Stanistreet tried to draw the conversation to it, and the other did not resist, but he let the subject drop as though it was of little account, and then, the steward announcing breakfast, they went below.
CHAPTER IV
DICK EM
Meanwhile the fo’c’sle had got wind of happenings on deck and even the watch that had turned in, turned out. Eight men, all told, schooner men of the old South Sea type, hard-bitten, berry-brown, and, save for their pants, as naked to the hot morning as the “kid.”
The Ranatonga had sailed without a mate; drink and the police combined had seized him the night before she sailed. There was no one of the afterguard on deck to keep order, and the criticism was free.
“Lord save us and love us,” cried one of the ruffians, “look at Bob playin’ nursery-maid!—Where’s your apron, Bob?”
“He’s stole the pore infant’s clothes,” put in another, “and pawned the p’rambulator. Len’s a dollar, Bob, if you haven’t bust it on drink.”
A gentleman peeling a banana offered part of it to the charge and was repulsed.
“Now then, now then,” cried Mr. Bowers, “scatter off an’ clean yourselves—take your damn bananas where they’re wanted! Jim, fetch me that old tin butt tub outa the galley, the one the doctor sticks his ’tatoes in, and there’s an old sponge in the locker behind the door. Grease yourself and then b—r off down and tell Jenkins to send’s a tow’l.”
He filled the bath with sea water dipped up in a bucket, and began the scrubbing and sponging, Jim, a long wall-eyed son of perdition, standing by with the towel, and the others looking on.
“What’s his name?” asked Jim.
“Name!” cried Bowers. “How the blazes do you think I know what his name is?—Hasn’t got one—” Then as an afterthought, “Dick’s his name, ain’t it, bo? Dick—hey! Dick, ain’t that your name, hey?”
“Dick,” repeated the laughing child, splashing the water. “Dick! Dick!”
“And Dick you’ll be,” said Bowers, with a last squeeze of the sponge, baptismal in its significance, though such a thought was far from the mind of the baptiser. “Now, hold me the tow’l—and there you are.”
He finished off the drying and released the child, who at once made for Jim, of all people in the world, clasped him round the legs with his chubby little arms, and looked up in his face. Innocence adoring the biggest blackguard that ever footed Long Wharf.
Then Stanistreet appeared from the saloon hatch and the fo’c’sle crowd melted, all but Jim.
“Bowers!” cried Stanistreet.
“Comin’, sir,” replied the bo’sun. He shoved the bath away, shot the sponge into the locker, and came forward.
“So Dick’s your name, is it?” said Jim, unclasping the tiny hands and lifting the “kid” in his arms. “And what’s your other name? Tell’s your other name, or up ye go over the rail, up ye go over the rail!” He danced the child in his arms, making pretence to throw it overboard. “Em,” cried Dick, the warm arms of Jim maybe waking in his misty mind the name of Emmeline, who had danced him so often. “Em—Em.”
“Here, drop the child,” said Bowers, coming forward again. “What are you foolin’ like that with him for? Sick you’ll make him before he’s had his breakfast.—What’s he sayin’?”
“Says his other name’s M,” replied Jim. “Sure as there’s hair on his head, he’s been tellin’ me. Dick M’s his name. Ain’t it, bo?”
“Em—Em,” cried Dick, stretching out his arms to Bowers.
“And Dick M you’ll be if you wants to,” said that worthy as he hoisted him on his shoulder and went aft