He called his uncle, who, holding strong opinions upon the subject of temperance, was very angry. He made a strict investigation into the matter, but failed to discover the culprit. The bottles were gone—vanished; nobody would confess to knowing anything about them.
Captain Rogers was very uneasy in his secret mind, for appearances were against Ralph. No one else had been trusted with the keys, and the spirit could not have gone without hands. He knew very little personally about his nephew, being so much at sea himself. He only saw him at long intervals, and in the presence of others; he seemed a steady boy then, and Rogers liked him, but this was the first chance he had met with upon which he could have gone wrong, in this manner, to his uncle's knowledge. With this doubt about him, the captain spoke very sharply to Ralph as to his carelessness in leaving the locker open.
Mr. Gilchrist took Ralph's part. He said that he must have smelt the liquor upon the boy's breath had he drunk it, but the captain knew that about Ralph's family history which he did not choose to talk about.
Ralph called himself a strict teetotaler, which the captain was not; but the elder Denham had been a drunkard, and had died from the consequence of his excesses. Had the madness broken out in his son? Did he inherit it in his blood? Had it taken that worst of all forms—secret drinking? He knew what his sister had suffered from her husband's conduct; was the same thing to begin all over again in the person of her son?
For two days the captain was miserable from this unspoken fear. Ralph had all the appearance of truth and honesty; Mr. Gilchrist was strongly in favour of his innocence; but the mate remarked that nobody but Mr. Denham had been trusted with the keys of the locker, not even the cook or the cook's mate, who, between them, discharged the functions of steward.
For two wretched, suspicious, anxious days did this doubt cark at the captain's heart. Then was little Harry Jackson found drunk—drunk as a lord—late one evening when off his watch.
Fresh investigations were set on foot, and it appeared that Kirke had given the boy some liquor as a bribe for silence regarding his own potations, of which Jackson could not fail to know as they shared the same cabin. Denham had not slept there since Mr. Gilchrist's illness, for he was still unwell, though better; and Ralph had begged to be allowed a bed upon the floor of his cabin, so as to attend upon him if necessary through the night.
Taking advantage of his absence, Kirke had been enjoying himself, after his own fashion, with the stolen spirits, and inducing Harry to join him so as to ensure his silence.