"Think if it was him!" says she, or she seems to say,—"think if it was him!"
And the next I knew I'd let slip my tongue in a jiffy, and given it to the mate that furious and onrespectful as I'll wager Whitmarsh never got before. And the next I knew after that they had the irons on me.
"Sorry about that, eh?" said he, the day before they took 'em off.
"No, sir," says I. And I never was. Kentucky never forgot that. I had helped him occasional in the beginning,—learned him how to veer and haul a brace, let go or belay a sheet,—but let him alone generally speaking, and went about my own business. That week in irons I really believe the lad never forgot.
One time—it was on a Saturday night, and the mate had been oncommon furious that week—Kentucky turned on him, very pale and slow (I was up in the mizzen-top, and heard him quite distinct).
"Mr. Whitmarsh," says he,—"Mr. Whitmarsh,"—he draws his breath in,—"Mr. Whitmarsh,"—three times,—"you've got the power and you know it, and so do the gentlemen who put you here; and I'm only a stow-away boy, and things are all in a tangle, but you'll be sorry yet for every time you've laid your hands on me!"
He hadn't a pleasant look about the eyes either, when he said it.
Fact was, that first month on the Madonna had done the lad no good. He had a surly, sullen way with him, some'at like what I've seen about a chained dog. At the first, his talk had been clean as my baby's, and he would blush like any girl at Bob Smart's stories; but he got used to Bob, and pretty good, in time, at small swearing.
I don't think I should have noticed it so much if it had not been for seeming to see Molly, and the sun, and the knitting-needles, and the child upon the deck, and hearing of it over, "Think if it was him!" Sometimes on a Sunday night I used to think it was a pity. Not that I was any better than the rest, except so far as the married men are always steadier. Go through any crew the sea over, and it is the lads who have homes of their own and little children in 'em as keep the straightest.
Sometimes, too, I used to take a fancy that I could have listened to a word from a parson, or a good brisk psalm-tune, and taken it in very good part. A year is a long pull for twenty-five men to be becalmed with each other and the devil. I don't set up to be pious myself, but I'm not a fool, and I know that if we'd had so much as one officer aboard who feared God and kept his commandments, we should have been the better men for it. It's very much with religion as it is with cayenne pepper,—if it's there, you know it.