“I should like a few words with you, Captain Eldridge.”
“Oh!” returned the skipper insolently, “what about?”
“About your behaviour to my wife, which, I’m sorry to say, has been entirely rude and distressing to her, making her feel quite ill. It has I find been a topic of general conversation in the ship, but I, being exceedingly unsuspicious and never dreaming that a gentleman could behave so, have left her more than I ought to have done, and you have taken advantage of this simplicity of mine to behave as you have. Now my eyes are opened, I tell you this must cease.”
While C. B. was speaking Captain Eldridge’s face grew almost livid with rage, his eyebrows contracted until they met across the bridge of his nose, and as soon as C. B. had finished he snarled out—
“Looky here, Mr. Educated Coon, I’ll allow no nigger to talk to me like that on board my ship, and if you open your head to me again on the subject, I’ll shoot ye: understand that. Now get out o’ my stateroom an’ keep yer squaw out o’ my way.”
C. B. retreated, keeping his eyes fixed upon the scoundrel, who doubtless at that moment would have carried out his threat, so mad was he. As soon as C. B. reached his cabin, where he was awaited by his wife, he entered, closed the door and fell upon his knees, crying in agony of soul, “Lord, keep my hands, keep my temper, save me from doing wrong. Don’t let that man try me beyond endurance, and see right done.”
Then he sprang up, calm again, and told his wife all that had happened, only leaving out the opprobrious epithet applied to her by the captain. As soon as he had done so he went on deck and sought Mr. Stewart, to whom he told the story. The old gentleman listened with compressed lips and lowering brows until it was finished, then said with a sigh, “Well, I guess we’re in the hands of a deep-dyed scoundrel, and we shall not have much of a gaudy time from this out. Now we shall all have to learn from you how to bring God into all our troubles, or else feel pretty miserable.”
Indeed he was right, for from thenceforth no indignity that it was in Captain Eldridge’s power to inflict upon them was omitted. He really seemed as if he laid awake at night thinking over new ways of annoying them. And the poor wretch did not know that only by constant prayer and watchfulness did C. B. restrain himself from slaying him with his bare hands. Coincidently with this development another arose. Every member of the crew knew of what had happened in the mysterious way that news spreads on board ship, and especially resented the way in which the skipper continually vented his wrath and disappointment upon them. Not only the foremast hands but the officers were thus disaffected, and undoubtedly the ship was getting fully ripe for mutiny.
Every time that C. B. came on deck it seemed as if the skipper was waiting for him, and insults and provocations came thick and fast. With his hand in his hip pocket where his revolver lay, the dastard (for a man must be a dastard who insults and abuses an unarmed man, having himself a lethal weapon) would hurl every epithet of contumely that he could invent at the great fellow, who took not the slightest notice of him until one day, maddened by the contemptuous silence as he deemed it of the passenger, he hurled a foul and filthy insult at Mary. With a leap like a tiger’s C. B. was upon him in spite of the quick shots fired, had torn the revolver from his grip and flung it overboard, and then, forcing him to his knees, said in a voice that was terrible in its deep calm—
“You bad man, you don’t know how near you have been to hell. Abuse me all you care to, it’s better than praise from a man like you; but if you value your life, don’t say a syllable against the good woman who is my wife. She is no subject for your foul lips.”