“I did have a little, but I left it in my bunk. I was afraid I’d spend it if I didn’t almost hide it from myself,” wailed honest Jim.
“All I had, except what I paid the sailor, is in my other clothes; that bill I gave the sailor was one I always carried with me because my mother gave——”
Melvin didn’t finish his sentence. He couldn’t. He was shivering too much and that sudden memory of his idolized mother almost unmanned him. Suppose he were to contract pneumonia? Her constant dread was that he should be ill and die.
But it was Gerald who now suffered most. Because the morning had been so warm he had put on a white duck suit. He fancied himself in it and it was becoming; but it was also thin, and under present circumstances a costume of torment. If Melvin were shivering, Gerald was worse. He was shaking so that the ricketty wagon rattled and he felt as if he were dying.
“Oh! man alive! Don’t act the tyrant this way! Tell us where you live and I give you my word of honor I’ll go to your place the first thing to-morrow and settle. I’ll even pay double,” begged Jim; and when the farmer remained obstinately silent, leaped from the wagon and dragged Gerald after him. “Run, run! You’ll get warm that way! Run, I tell you, for your life!”
But the poor lad couldn’t. He sank down upon the wet earth and was fast lapsing into unconsciousness when the lash of the teamster’s whip fell smartly about him.
“I’ll warm you, ye young scamp! Cheat an honest man of his earnin’s, will you?”
But the whip went no further. With a yell as of some enraged animal, Jim flew at the man and gathered all the strength of his labor-trained muscles for one fierce onslaught.