“You don't look like a fire-eating, swashbuckling party to me,” he said.
“I am the most peaceable chap you've ever seen, Mr. Mott. You needn't be alarmed. I'm not going to bite a hole in the ship and scuttle her. Moreover, I am a very meek and lowly individual on board this ship. There's a lot of difference between being in supreme command with all kinds of authority to bolster you up and being a rat in a trap as I am now. Up in Copperhead Camp I was a nabob, here I'm a nobody. Up there I was the absolute boss of five or six hundred men,—I won't say I could boss the women,—and I made 'em all walk chalk without once losing step. There were murderers and crooks, blacklegs and gunmen in my genial aggregation, men whose true names we never knew, men who were wanted in every part of the civilized world. The only place on earth, I suppose, where they could feel reasonably at home was in that gosh-awful nowhere that we called Copperhead Camp. You can't handle such men with mittens. And there were good men there as well,—good, strong, righteous men. They were the leaven that made the whole thing palatable. Without them I could have had no authority. But I dare say I am boring you. The present situation is the one we're interested in, not the lordly past of your humble and, I trust, obedient servant.”
His smile was most engaging, but back of it the two seamen read strength, decision, integrity. The gay, bantering, whilom attitude of this unusual young man was not assumed. It was not a pose. He was not a dare-devil, nor was he a care-free, unstable youth who had matured abruptly in the exercise of power. On the contrary, he was,—and Captain Trigger knew it,—the personification of confidence, an optimist to whom victory and defeat are equally unavoidable and therefore to be reckoned as one in the vast scheme of human endeavour; a fighter who merely rests on his arms but never lays them down; a spirit that absorbs the bitters and the sweets of life with equal relish.
Captain Trigger was not slow in making up his mind. This clean-minded, clean-bodied American with the confident though respectful smile, was a chap after his own heart.
“I hardly know what to do with you, Percival,” he said, a scowl of genuine perplexity in his eyes. “You are not an ordinary transgressor. You are a gentleman. You have exercised an authority perhaps somewhat similar to my own,—possibly in some respects your position up there was even more autocratic, if I may use the term. I am not unconscious of all this, and yet I have no choice other than that designated by law. The regulations are unalterable. It is a matter of morale, pure and simple. We are compelled to treat all stowaways alike. Of course, I shall not subject you to the ordinary—shall we say methods of—”
“Pardon me, Captain,” broke in the young man, his smile no longer in evidence; “I am asking no favours. I expect to be treated as an ordinary stowaway. Set me to work at anything you like and I will make as good a job of it as possible.”
“I was about to suggest that you serve as a sort of assistant to Mr. Codge, the purser. I've no doubt he could find something for you to do and—”
“If that is your way of punishing me, Captain Trigger, of course there is nothing for me to do but to submit.”
“Eh? I am sure you will not find Mr. Codge a hard taskmaster. He is quite a good-natured man.”
“Extremely kind and considerate,” hastily added Mr. Mott, reassuringly.