“Run for it!”
A suggestion from an outsider, a hope clutched at eagerly, the words seemed to arouse him to action.
With one bound he was over the rail and on the wharf. Before Captain Morris could comprehend what had occurred, Tom Dalton was flying down the wharf like one mad.
“You young jackanapes,” he yelled, advancing with uplifted whip toward Will, “I’ll teach you to raise a mutiny on my ship.”
“Captain Morris, don’t you dare to strike me.”
Erect, defiant, flinching not one whit, the spirited boy faced the enraged captain.
“You’ll help my crew to desert, will you? Take that.”
The whip cut the air, but not so quickly but that Will Bertram evaded its circling stroke.
He leaped aside, and seized the first article for defense that came to hand.
It proved to be a bucket half full of soft soap with which a sailor had been washing the decks, but he did not notice that amid his excited determination to resent Captain Morris’ exercise of authority.