“I will if you’ll untie this rope that’s around my arms and legs.”
“What am I going to do with you?” asked Collins moodily.
“For your own sake, the best thing you can do with me is to scull back to the ship.”
“Do you think I’m a fool?” snarled Collins.
“It looks that way to me.”
“Yes, you’d like to have me take you back to the ship, wouldn’t you? You’d get a lot of glory out of that, but what would I get, do you think? I’d get some more double irons, for safe-keeping, the log would say,” he added contemptuously, “and then I’d get a general court martial and be sent to prison for several years. And for what? Just because I did what any man in my place would do; if you had a wife, sick, perhaps dying in a strange town, wouldn’t you try to see her no matter if you did break some artificial regulations? Tell me as a man, wouldn’t your duty to your sick wife come before anything else?”
“It certainly would,” replied Ralph softly.
“What did I do, and how was I treated?” cried Collins. “I went to the executive officer and told him about it and asked for a couple of hours, and got treated like a dog and called a liar. Then I did what any decent man would do, I tried to go without permission and was chased and treated like an escaping criminal; and you were one of the chasers and fished me out of the water with a boat-hook. And then I was put in irons; me, a decent, self-respecting American!”
Collins boiled over with rage when recounting his wrongs.
“I heard you at the mast, Collins; I felt awfully sorry for you when the executive officer would not let you go.”