“What’s he doing locked in my cabin?” roared the captain. “I say, are you skipper here, or am I? What’s he doing in my cabin locked in?”
“Rubbing his sore head, I s’pose,” drawled Jack Penny. “I hit him as hard as I could with one o’ them fence rails.”
“Fence rails!” cried the captain, who looked astounded at the big thin boy’s coolness, and then glanced in the direction he pointed beneath the bulwarks. “Fence rails! What do you mean—one of them capstan bars?”
“I don’t know what you call ’em,” said Jack. “I give him a regular wunner on the head.”
“What for, you dog?”
“Here, don’t you call me a dog or there’ll be a row,” cried Jack, rising erect and standing rather shakily about five feet eleven, looking like a big boy stretched to the bursting point and then made fast. “He was going to kill the black fellow with his knife after knocking him down. I wasn’t going to stand by and see him do that, was I?”
“Well, I s’pose not,” said the captain, who looked puzzled. “Where is the black fellow? Here, where’s Jimmy?”
“Down that square hole there, that wooden well-place,” said Jack, pointing to the forecastle hatch. “He slipped down there when the yaller chap hit him.”
“Look here—” said the captain as I made for the hatch to look after Jimmy. “But stop a minute, let’s have the black up.”
Two of the men went below and dragged up poor Jimmy, who was quite stunned, and bleeding freely from a wound on the head.