Hinkel yelled viciously for a hand to take the wheel—kicking the prostrate Donald violently with his heavy boots and swearing vengeance as soon as he could leave the jerking spokes. Donald was too sick to take much heed and lay across the grating horribly ill.
“Jou verdammt schweine!” bawled the furious German as soon as he was relieved. “Ich teach you!” He grabbed the boy by the arm and dragged him across the deck, swearing in mixed English and German. Over to the hen-coops at the fore-end of the poop he hauled the unresisting apprentice, and opening up a door, jammed him headfirst in among the screeching fowls. Slamming the barred door down again, he turned the catch, and stood up. “Stay in dere dis vatch!” he snarled. “I’ll teach jou to gedt fonny me vit!”
Too sick to protest or cry out, Donald lay prone inside the narrow coop while the few remaining inmates clucked and squawked and pecked at his head. At that moment he only wished to die and end his misery, and this feeling, together with the violent jar he had received at the wheel, the tobacco in his stomach and the foul odor from the floor of the coop, sent him off into a faint.
He came-to a short time later to find himself being pulled out of the coop by Mr. Hinkel, and he heard Mr. Nickerson saying, “Bring him out!” in a voice as harsh as a file. The mate was in his shirt and under-drawers, and when Donald was hauled from his foul prison, the chief officer bent down and asked, “What in blazes were you doing, boy?” Donald related dully how he had been thrown over the wheel-box. The second mate broke in. “I tell jou, sir, he vos star-gazink und let der veel go! She nearly broached mit der jung fool’s monkey-tricks—”
The Nova Scotian leaned forward and peered menacingly into the German’s face. “Listen, Hinkel,” he said slowly and in a voice as hard as steel, but as ominous as a death threat, “I’ve got your flag an’ number, my bucko, and if I catch you man-handlin’ that boy again I’ll break you like a dry stick. You measly Dutchman!” That was all he said, quietly, so that the man at the wheel could not hear, but Hinkel was visibly impressed and without a word, turned militarily on his heels and walked to loo’ard. The mate watched him for a moment and bent down and raised Donald to his feet. “Go to yer bunk, boy, an’ stay there for the rest of the watch.” Donald staggered away feeling unspeakably grateful to his champion, and with a fixed determination to forever eschew at least one of a “dyed-in-the-wool” shell-back’s accomplishments.
That the second mate hated him, Donald knew, though he was completely at a loss to account for the continual hazing by the brutal German. Possibly, he thought, it was because the fellow was a natural bully, and Donald’s misfortune in getting the second mate into trouble with the skipper for being off the poop on the night in the Firth of Clyde may have accentuated Hinkel’s spite.
The captain’s attitude was also unaccountable to Donald’s reasoning. During the whole of the time he had been on the barque, Captain Muirhead had never spoken to him, nor had he taken notice of him in any way save by furtive glances. The man had no reason to dislike Donald, yet after the familiar conversations they had had together at Glasgow, he had now closed up like a clam, though to the other boys he often passed friendly remarks, and on occasions, corrected them with the rough side of his tongue. To Donald, he neither spoke friendly or otherwise, and the boy wondered why the skipper maintained such an attitude towards him. Thompson often commented on the fact and put forth several conclusions. “He’s either afraid of you because you’re the owner’s nephew, or else he doesn’t care a continental about you because you’re a charity ’prentice. It’s one thing or the other, sure.”
Off the Plate, Donald underwent another bitter experience which left a deep and lasting impression upon him and served to put the captain in the proper category of relationship. An English barque, homeward bound, had passed and McKenzie was on the poop handing code flags for the Old Man who spoke the barque and asked to be reported. It was blowing fresh abaft the beam, but the sea was smooth save for a long swell from the south’ard. The last hoist was flying from the spanker-gaff, when the halliard parted and the bunting came fluttering down on the poop. The other ship had got the signal, however, as her answering pennant was up, and Captain Muirhead gruffly told Mr. Hinkel to stow the flags away. During the afternoon in the second mate’s watch, the Captain suddenly told Hinkel to have the halliard rove off again as he might require it at any time. “Ye don’t need tae top up th’ gaff, mister,” the Old Man added. “Send yin o’ thae boys up. That young McKenzie is spry enough tae reeve it off!”
As the ship was running, the spanker was furled, but to shin up a slippery spar standing out from the jiggermast at an angle of about thirty-five degrees is no easy task even in a dock, and with the vessel rolling and the gaff swaying, even though braced with the vangs, the job was exceedingly risky, and able seamen would have refused to do it. Donald, however, made no demur, but jumped to obey the second mate’s guttural command. With the light halliard in his hand, he clambered up the jigger shrouds and swung down from the top on to the gaff and sat astride it facing towards the stern of the ship.
With the halliard in his teeth, he started to clamber up the pole with his arms and legs encircling it, but owing to the fact that it was a scraped spar and recently “slushed,” the task of shinning it was exceedingly difficult. Several times he hauled himself up, only to slide back, and once or twice the swaying of the ship almost caused him to slip off altogether.