"Then come up. Beelzebub fetch thee! What's hindering thee?"
Miles could have answered truly that it was a loud-voiced, broad-shouldered man, with a bushy gray beard, whose name was Jones, that hindered him; but he thought best, even on so poor an invitation, to scramble in silence up the steep ladder to the quarter-deck. The wind there was high, so he gripped the bulwark to keep erect.
"Well, now thou art up, what is it thou wouldst have?" roared Jones.
"Beer, sir. For Captain Standish's wife. She is ill."
Master Jones hesitated a little minute, then caught Miles by the collar of his doublet, and only let go when he landed him within the roundhouse. Miles said nothing to this, but his heart thumped alarmingly at finding himself thus tumbled headlong into the very lair of the Master. Yet the roundhouse proved a harmless place, with its shipshape bunks and table and stools; and one of the mates, who lay upon a bunk, rose up at Jones's bidding, to do nothing more formidable than fill Miles's jug from a keg that stood in one corner.
"Now see to it thou dost not filch the beer by the way," grumbled Master Jones. "I be ready to give to your Captain's wife, but not to fill the stomach of every knavish lad on shipboard; dost thou hear?"
"I wouldn't take the beer that was meant for Mistress Standish," Miles said indignantly.
"Nay, but boys be a slippery race," growled the Master. "The saints be blest I never had none!"
Miles privately was glad of that, for he could not help thinking how unhappy a boy would be, with such an alarming father as Master Jones. Very prudently, he did not say so, but, seizing his jug, backed out of the roundhouse, almost too hastily to say "Thank you."