“D’ye hear me?” roared the mate, now thoroughly alarmed.
Frank faltered out, “We don’t know, sir, we couldn’t find him. We’ve hunted everywhere we could think of, and that’s what made us so late.”
As soon as the dread truth soaked into the mate’s brain, his fury was terrible to witness. He was almost insane at the thought that after all his care in dealing with his worthless skipper, and his mastery over the very difficult circumstances of his position, this calamity should fall upon him, Harry being the son of a particular friend of the owners’, who had especially commended him to the mate’s care. Matters were all the more complicated, in that the skipper had not been near the ship since he had gone ashore the morning after her arrival, and although this was nothing less than criminal on his part, it would not in any way absolve the mate for losing the boy.
In vain did the second mate try and comfort him, pointing out how absolutely free from blame he was except in the one detail of letting the boys run ashore for an hour. But the poor fellow could not pardon himself, and sleep being an impossibility, he sat and suffered through the night.
About 3 A.M., when he had arrived at that stage of sleeplessness when the idea of ever having slept seems ridiculous, and had turned over in his mind a thousand schemes for recovering his lost apprentice and had rejected them all as useless, he thought he heard a sound on deck.
Now there is no place so quiet as a ship at anchor in a snug harbour on a calm night, and there is no place where an unwonted sound is so easily heard. Consequently the mate fairly bristled with apprehension, and as he lay in his bunk he was like a cat ready to pounce. Then he saw a gleam of light flash across the cabin, and in a moment he was out of his bunk, his trusty revolver clutched in his right hand, and peering out of the pitchy dark of his cabin he saw the forms of three men in the pale glimmer of the young moonlight stealing across the saloon deck. Without a moment’s hesitation he raised his revolver and fired three shots in quick succession, the noise and stench of the exploding powder filling the narrow space almost to suffocation.
There were many confused noises of pain, of rage, and of fear; but Mr. Jenkins calmly retreated to his room, and lit the dark lantern which all ship’s officers possess, and emerging once more from his cabin met the second mate, also with his lantern and weapon in hand. Their greetings were curt, and their investigations resulted in finding two badly wounded men of the crew, the big German before mentioned, and an Irish-American of whom I have hitherto said nothing.
These culprits were too frightened and weak from loss of blood to say anything in reply to questions, so leaving them for a while the two officers hurried on deck, finding no one there; but the second mate rushed to the stern, remembering that the boat had been passed there instead of being hoisted, and flashing his lantern down at her, saw two cowering figures in her stern-sheets completely demoralised with fright. He sternly bade them come up, emphasising his readiness and willingness to shoot if they did not.
Tremblingly they answered, “Ay, ay, sir, we’ll come up; don’t shoot, for God’s sake,” and began to haul the boat alongside. They mounted the ladder and began to scurry forward, when the second mate stopped them and bade them carry their shipmates with them, the mate having in the meantime roughly improvised a couple of tourniquets for their wounds, and stopped the bleeding therefrom.
They did so very humbly and carefully, and when they had gone the mate said solemnly, “Looky here, Cope, I believe if it hadn’t been for those blessed boys you and I would have had our throats cut to-night. I’ve heard say that it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, but I feel sure that we owe our lives to the misfortune of that infernal young scalawag Carter having chosen to-night to run away. I don’t care now. I feel regularly happy. And if I only had a drop of something stronger than this pump grog I would celebrate.”