“I haven’t done a thing to them, sir; I don’t know what I could do except try and go on as I began, doing my work as well as I can. They wouldn’t talk to me, nor let me talk to them, and so I’ve just had to let them go their own way while I have gone mine.”
“Yes, yes, that’s all very well,” hastily rejoined the skipper, “but how have you managed to make chums with Merritt? I never thought he would associate with any one.”
“I haven’t the least idea, sir,” replied the young man. “He says he likes me, and I’m very glad, but I don’t know why he should have suddenly found out that he did.”
“Ah well,” sighed the captain, “it is as I’ve often said, you’re too good for this wicked world and you’re bound to have trouble, but I’m mighty glad I don’t see trouble stickin’ out so far as I did. An’ now as we’re just comin’ on to the whaling ground, I hope you’ll bring us luck and do as well as you did first time lowerin’.”
“I hope so too, sir,” answered C. B., “and that the other fellows ’ll get a look in too. I can’t bear to see men so disappointed.” The captain gave him a critical look and walked away, shaking his head gravely as though to hint that really his new harponeer was a problem too difficult for him to solve.
Now by what process of reasoning or instinct Mr. Merritt arrived at the conclusion that there was some mischief quietly hatching, directed against his harponeer in connexion with his work, there are no means of knowing; it was one of those impulses that are not to be reasoned out, only felt and obeyed. At any rate, so strong was his feeling that something was afoot, that he sacrificed watch after watch of his sleep at night lying rolled up in a blanket on top of the after house where he could keep an eye on his boat. This of course in his watch below, when he was supposed to be in his cabin, and he took the greatest pains to keep his movements secret. After nearly a week’s watching, he was rewarded by seeing a dark figure, which his keen sight determined to be the mate’s harponeer, Pepe, creep noiselessly up into the boat and settle down into her so that his movements should not be seen, the mate having gone below to fill his pipe, and the third mate lolling half asleep abaft the wheel.
Merritt slipped down from his place like an eel, slid along the deck to the side of his boat, then sprang up on the rail and peered in to her, saying sharply—
“What ye doin’ in my boat, Pepe?”
The big harponeer stood up and stammered—
“I—I thought I heard a fly’n’ fish drop in thar, an’ was a-lookin’ for it.”