“Do you know what you’ve done, you mutinous scoundrel?” he yelled. “Oh, my hearty, you’ll pay dearly for this! To the forecastle! You are no longer an officer on this ship! As to these boys, put them to work,” he ordered to the mate; “and give them plenty of it, and the hardest kind at that!”
Jack Marcy walked up to the Captain and looked him squarely in the eye.
“Captain Morris,” he said, “you’ve relieved me of duty on the ship, well and good; but you leave those boys alone. It ain’t in my nature to see them abused, and I won’t, and there ain’t a man here that don’t stand by me. I’ve sailed with you a long time and did my duty, but I’m through now. You can send me home on a passing ship or land me ashore for mutiny, just as you like. You and I part company this voyage, and that’s the end of it.”
The Captain’s brow darkened.
“I will have you tried for mutiny!” he cried. “As to those boys, they’ll work their passage, I’ll guarantee.”
Captain Morris did not boast vainly. That day and for many days following, Will and Tom were put at the severest drudgery.
Jack Marcy’s position had been given to one of the sailors and he himself relieved from duty.
Captain Morris did not again exercise any positive cruelty against the boys, but saw that they did not idle their time away.
He and the mate seemed to be continually holding mysterious conversations, and more than once the crew discussed the strange course of the ship.
“We seem to be ocean bound,” Will overheard one of them say one day, “with no definite port in view.”