While he was talking to the bos’n, Captain Muirhead slipped quietly around the chart-house and stood before them. “Whaur’s the second officer?” he said in a quiet, but ominous tone.
“Th’ lad here, sir, was up aloft slushin’ down an’ took sick an’ Mister Hinkel got it, sir,” answered Martin somewhat eagerly. “He’s gone for’ard to get somethin’ to clean hisself off with, sir!”
The Old Man muttered unintelligibly under his breath, stared over the port rail at something ahead, and then gave a quiet-spoken order to the man at the wheel. The helm was shifted, and when the second mate came aft, the skipper called him. Pointing into the gloom for’ard, he said: “Do you see that ship ahead?” Hinkel followed the direction of the Old Man’s hand. “Yaw, sir!” he answered. A new phase of the silent Captain Muirhead’s character was revealed to Donald in the violent outburst which came from his lips. “Then what th’ hell dae ye mean by leavin’ th’ poop afore we’re clear o’ th’ Firth,” he thundered in a strident voice so utterly different from his usual quiet-spokeness. “What’s yer look-out doin’? Asleep, I suppose? Damn yer bloody eyes, we’d ha’ been intae that fella if Ah hadna jist spied her! Your place is here, mister, especially while we’re in th’ midst o’ Channel traffic. Ye’ll no dare tae leave this poop in your watch onless Ah’m here, or th’ mate, or unless it’s necessary fur th’ safety o’ th’ shup! Awa’ forrit an’ see if yer look-out’s awake!”
Hinkel made no reply but slouched down the poop ladder, and a moment after his guttural cursing could be heard as he dressed down the sleepy watchman on the fo’c’sle-head. “Hinkel will not love you for this night, son,” remarked the bos’n. “He’s an ugly swine, so keep out of his way.”
Donald discreetly kept to loo’ard when Hinkel came aft again. The captain paced the poop for a spell and then went below. Donald heard the second mate growl something to the man at the wheel, and a moment afterwards turned to find the hulking German in the gloom alongside of him. Hinkel grasped him by the arm in a grip that made him wince. “Jou verdammt schweinehunde!” he snarled through gritted teeth and shaking the boy violently. “Mein Gott! Ich like fur kick jou in der vasser—jou cursed rat! Jou look oudt! I’ll sveat jou fur dis!” In his rage he was almost unintelligible and he concluded by heaving Donald violently away from him.
During the rest of the watch the boy attended most assiduously to his duties, as he knew he had made an enemy who would only need a slight excuse to wreak vengeance on him, but in a way that would be upheld by the British Merchant Shipping laws and the officials administering it.
With a fair wind and fine weather, the Kelvinhaugh cleared the St. George’s Channel and swung away S.W. across the broad expanse of the North Atlantic for the equator and on the deepwaterman’s track which would bring her in the vicinity of the land again at Cape San Roque on the Brazilian coast. It was fine weather for the ship, but it wasn’t fine weather for Donald. Captain Muirhead ignored him absolutely, at least by speech, though he watched him at work often with furtive glances. The Old Man was not much of a conversationalist, but he did talk to the other apprentices, and his ignoring of young McKenzie was commented on in the half-deck. Thompson summed it up, rather brutally, but Donald knew that he meant it in a kindly spirit. “Nipper,” he said, “your uncle has no love for you or the Old Man would be falling all over you. Your stingy Scotch relative looks upon you as a charity brat—it don’t need but half an eye to see that, for he sent you to sea parish-rigged, with an outfit as mean as what ye’d get from a boarding-house master in Jerusalem. He shoved you off here as the cheapest thing he could do—an apprentice without a premium paid down—and he’ll see that you work for your keep and clothes. The skipper knows it, and that square-headed Hinkel knows it, for he’d never dare treat any of us other fellows the way he treats you. Your best friend aft here is that hard-case Blue-nose mate.... And, say, kid, just you make that skulker Moore do his share. He’s sojerin’ around in here smoking and loafing while you’re on deck. Why doesn’t Hinkel get after him, I’d like to know? You just bring Moore to his bearings, kid, and jab him one on the jaw if he gets lippy!” Donald thanked the senior apprentice with tears in his eyes. Ever since he had come aboard this ship, it had required all his nerve and courage to keep from breaking down at the petty tyrannies and persecutions of the second mate. The captain must be abetting his officer, or why didn’t he interfere in cases where, as Donald knew, he, as an apprentice, was not supposed to be ordered to perform. Tasks, which in most ships were done by older hands, were delegated to McKenzie, and he carried them out cheerfully, thinking that he was going through the rigorous course prescribed for those who would become “compleat and perfect seamen.”
Mr. Nickerson seemed indeed to be his best friend among the after guard. Though not in the mate’s watch, yet that officer did not take long to size Donald up as a lad having the right spirit in him for a sailor. He was willing and jumped to obey a command. He was intelligent and mastered the intricacies of the big barque’s rigging and gear in less time than most green hands would have taken to determine bow from stern and starboard from port. In the dog-watches and on Sundays, the mate took Donald in hand and taught him how to steer, and by the time the Kelvinhaugh had picked up the north-east trade winds in the latitude of the Canaries, he was able to take a wheel in fine weather and steer “by the wind” or by compass.
The Nova Scotian’s lessons were forceful and not readily forgotten. “I jest show a boy once,” he used to say, “an’ then I expect him to go ahead an’ do it himself. When I have to show a thing twice I ram it home with a rope’s end!” Jenkins and Moore—the latter especially—had cause to fear the mate’s teachings, but Donald stood high in his favor through his intelligent grasp of things and the will to master a problem. To the other apprentices and in the eyes of the hands for’ard, Nickerson was a “ruddy Yankee bucko,” and it must be admitted, the epithet was justified, for he was a “taut” hand and made no bones about using his fist or boot to accentuate “nippiness.”
By the time the barque caught the “trades,” and in spite of the miserable food supplied, young McKenzie had toughened up wonderfully. The continual “horsing” to which he was being subjected by his watch officer seemed to be the very elixir necessary to building up his apparently frail constitution. His muscles and sinews hardened and developed; his eyes were clear and bright, and the sallowness of his face became replaced by a healthy tan. The soft hands became hard and horny-palmed, while his movements were quick and active under the spur of the mate’s teachings and the second mate’s spite. If the sea killed some boys, it was making a man of Donald, and he recalled the old Glasgow specialist’s advice to his mother, “He’ll be as tough as a louse an’ as hard tae kill!”