The captain, with suddenly subdued expression on his face, was about to say something, but evidently thought better of it. Instead he remarked quietly, “When ye get yer boat aboard, pit her on her course again. If th’ laud wants a drap o’ whusky, Ah’ll gie ye some for him.” Then apologetically, “Ah got a bad fricht, an’ didny ken whit was happenin’ when Ah gied th’ man th’ order.” And as he turned away, Nickerson stared at him curiously and muttered, “Liar!”
Donald’s plunge into the sea knocked the breath out of him for a moment, but when he came up, gasping and half-stunned, he saw, as in a dream, a life-buoy being thrown over the barque’s taff-rail. When he regained his bearings he swam for it, and succeeded in reaching and hanging on to the circle of canvassed cork. He held on for an indefinite period, during which time he saw the Kelvinhaugh coming to the wind, and rising on top of a swell, he made out a quarter-boat pulling towards him. He shouted several times, and in a daze, heard voices. “Here he is! Steady all! Easy starboard! Pull port! ’Vast pulling all!” Then he was grabbed by the arms and hauled aboard the boat, where he lay on the bottom boards and vomited the salt water he had swallowed.
Feeling sick and shaky, he was carried into the half-deck, and Thompson and the steward took his clothes off and rolled him up in warm blankets and put him in his bunk. He was given a stiff drink of hot whisky and almost immediately went off to sleep, and the talk of the other apprentices at tea only woke him after he had slept like a log for almost five hours.
“How’re ye feeling, nipper?” enquired Thompson kindly. “Good? That’s fine. Ye’re gettin’ to be a reg’lar hell-diver, you are, and, my eye! didn’t you cause a rare rumpus!” And he told what had happened after Donald had taken the plunge. “That measly squarehead of a Hinkel is trying to do for you!” added the senior apprentice solemnly. “You should have seen him when the mate came up on deck an’ shoved the Old Man away from the wheel. The big Dutchman runs for’ard yelling in Doytch an’ what th’ blazes he was saying nobody knew. I think he was running away from Nickerson. If you wanted to see a reg’lar genuine ‘stand-‘em-up-and-knock-‘em-down,’ ‘give-me-none-of-yer-sass’ Western Ocean bucko look on a man’s face, it was on the mate’s when he called the Old Man ‘a white-livered hound!’ I guess Hinkel thought he would lay him out with a capstan-bar, so he skedaddled!”
Donald had got his clothes from the galley, where they had been dried by the cook, and was sitting in the apprentice’s berth talking with Jenkins, when Mr. Nickerson looked in. He gave Donald a sharp glance. “Nipper,” he said, curtly, “you’ll come in my watch after this. Jenkins will go in the second mate’s.”
The mate had just come from for’ard after questioning the bos’n. “Them spanker vangs, sir, were all right when I examined them day afore yest’day, sir,” Martin had said. “The tackles are brand new and there ain’t been nothin’ to cause a chafe or enough strain to strand th’ rope. Them strands, sir, were filed or scraped, sir, to make believe they was chafed or wore, and I thinks, sir, as how that second mate did it.”
“And the signal halliards?”
“They was alright, sir. Th’ Old Man, sir, jest made a slippery bend on th’ flag, I guess, and it carried away an’ un-rove.”
Mr. Nickerson nodded. “You jest keep your tongue between your teeth, Bose, an’ don’t open your trap about th’ matter to anybody. I’ll look into this.” And he walked to the half-deck and gave Donald a change of watch.