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The captain looked at the printed number beneath the fashion plate and then turned to the description in the text. "'Afternoon gown for miss of sixteen," he read. "Humph! that settles that, first crack. Bos'n ain't but half of sixteen." "Anyway," put in Asaph, "you need somethin' she could wear forenoons, if she wanted to. What's this one? She looks young enough."
They was Andrews's mates for a spell, until th' Irishman, God bless him, knocked him overboards an' nearly killed him in a scuffle on th' India Docks." "Cast loose; I want to hear," said the bos'n. There was a moment's silence, and Chips looked at me as though questioning the senior officer of his watch.
As he worked, he hummed a tune and saw the narrow jaw of McTee jut out. Harrigan smiled. He had scarcely finished stowing his bucket and brush away when the bos'n brought him word that he was wanted in the fireroom. Masters's face was serious. "What's the main idea?" asked Harrigan. The bos'n cast a worried eye fore and aft. "Black McTee's breakin' you," he said; "you're getting the whip."
The bos'n, a large man named Spurgen, who had quite a swagger for a merchant sailor, was holding forth to the quartermaster, Hans, on nautical operations. "An' how'd ye do if ye had an anchor atween, decks widout nothin' to hoist it out wid?" he was saying as I came in. Hans affirmed, with many oaths, that he'd let the "bloody hancor go bloomin' well to the bottom before he'd fool wid it."
It did not do; it would not dry out to smoke, and the salt in it made it unfit to chew. But the bos'n had an upper bunk in the forward house, in which was a couple of pounds of navy plug, and he and the sailor talked this over until their craving for a smoke overcame their fear of death. "Of course, by this time, all discipline was ended, and all my commands and entreaties went for nothing.
They'll see a sample in Van Roos and Borgson. Every yell they let out'll be an argument for us. We'll have Henshaw before the day's done." Sam Hall pushed his thick fingers slowly through his hair, stupefied by this careful cruelty, and even the one eye of Jacob Flint grew dim, but Garry Cochrane slapped the bos'n on the shoulder heartily. "Jerry," he said, "you got the makin's of a great man.
The captain pulled the kitchen door almost shut and listened at the crack. The first spoken words by the visitor appeared to relieve Captain Cy's anxiety; but they seemed to astonish him greatly. "Why!" he exclaimed in a whisper. "Ain't that It sounds like " "It's teacher," whispered Bos'n, who also had been listening. "She's come to find out why I wasn't at school. You tell her, Uncle Cy."
One afternoon she did not return at her usual hour. Captain Cy was waiting at the gate when Asaph Tidditt happened along. Bailey, too, was with him. "Waitin' for Bos'n, was you?" asked the town clerk. "Well, you'll have to wait quite a spell, I cal'late. She's been kept after school." "Yes; and she's got to write fifty lines of copy," added Bailey. Captain Cy was highly indignant.
He impudently winked at me as he stepped into the light, and hitched up his trousers in a nonchalant manner that was amusing. He had his shoes in his hand, and he had evidently dressed in a hurry to obey the summons of the mate. "Petrak's my name, sir, and they make a joke on my head by making me out 'Dago Red, sir. Been bos'n in "
The blunt message he had intrusted to Georgianna would, he believed, arouse Phoebe's indignation. She would not call again. And when he returned to Bos'n, it would be to take up the child's fight alone. If he lost that fight, or WHEN he lost it, he would close the Cy Whittaker place, and leave Bayport for good.
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