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At the ripe age of ten he was taken from school, and set to assist his father in the trade of tallow-chandler and soap-boiler. But dipping wicks and pouring grease pleased him hardly better than reconciling infant damnation and a red-hot hell with the loveliness of Christianity. The lad remained discontented.
"So would you, perhaps, if you had been in the same berth," returned Wicks; and he told the whole story of the rotten water, the long calm, the squall, the seamen drowned, glibly and hotly, talking, with his head in the lion's mouth, like one pleading in the dock. I heard the same tale from the same narrator in the saloon in San Francisco; and even then his bearing filled me with suspicion.
To another group, known as Fulgorids, gigantic heads and streamers of wax have been allotted. Those possessing the former rejoice in the name of Lantern Flies, but they are at present unfaithful vestal bugs, though it is extremely doubtful if their wicks were ever trimmed or lighted.
Kit wanted to laugh, for Bet was repeating word for word what she had read only a few days before in a western story. But Bet's next question was her own. "How much is Kie Wicks paying you for this job?" she asked. One man started to take a step forward, but Bet's gun menaced him. "Stand right where you are! Not a step nearer! Answer my question!" "Five dollars apiece!" growled the second man.
The five, dressed in deerskin hunting shirts, leggins, and moccasins, and everyone carrying a rifle, hatchet, and knife, entered a large low room, dimly lighted by some wicks burning in tallow. A man of middle years, with a keen New England face, sat at a little table, and several others of varying ages stood near.
When the answer came, he said easily, "Excuse me for disturbing you, Mr. Wicks, but I have a man here in the office who wants to get into your safe, and I need you badly. You had better come in the back way." "I'll be with you in a shake," was the reply; "hold him down till I get there." And a few minutes later the old gentleman knocked at the door.
Uncle Bobbie Wicks pulled down the top of his desk and heard the lock click with a long sigh of satisfaction, for a glance at his large, old-fashioned hunting-case watch told him that it was nearly eleven o'clock.
"I think you're right, Mr. Wicks," agreed Bet. Kit looked her disgust. To herself she was thinking, "I never would have believed that Bet could be such a tenderfoot. To let Kie Wicks pull the wool over her eyes like that! She certainly is an easy mark!" But Bet was not such an easy mark as Kit imagined.
The other three were now all gathered on the fore hatch, and Wicks took his place beside them without question asked or answered. They sat close like children in the dark, and shook each other with their shaking. The dusk continued to fall; and there was no sound but the beating of the surf and the occasional hiccup of a sob from Tommy Hadden.
For the voyage in the man-of-war they were now safe; yet a few more days of peril, activity and presence of mind in San Francisco, and the whole horrid tale was blotted out; and Wicks again became Kirkup, and Goddedaal became Carthew men beyond all shot of possible suspicion, men who had never heard of the Flying Scud, who had never been in sight of Midway Reef.
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