“Oh, captain!” I cried indignantly, for my feelings were too much for me; and I seized a rope just as the Malay went down, after uttering a despairing shriek.
“Let that rope alone, boy,” said the skipper with a grim smile. “There, he’s come up again. Ketch hold!” he cried, and he threw his line so that the Malay could seize it, which he did, winding it round and round one arm, while the slowly-sailing schooner dragged him along through the sea. “I’m only giving him a reg’lar good squencher, doctor. I don’t want him aboard with a spark left in him to break out again: we’ve had enough of that. Haul him aboard, lads, and shove him in the chain locker to get dry. We’ll set him ashore first chance.”
The Malay was hauled aboard with no very gentle hands by the white sailors, and as soon as he reached the deck he began crawling to the captain’s feet, to which he clung, with gesture after gesture full of humility, as ha talked excitedly in a jargon of broken English and Malay.
“That’s what I don’t like in these fellows,” said Jack Penny quietly; “they’re either all bubble or else all squeak.”
“Yes; he’s about squenched now, squire,” said the captain. “Here, shove him under hatches, and it’s lucky for you I’m not in a hanging humour to-day. You’d better behave yourself, or you may be brought up again some day when I am.”
As the captain spoke to the streaming, shivering wretch he made a noose in the rope he held, manipulating it as if he were really going to hang the abject creature, in whom the fire of rage had quite become extinct. Then the sailors took hold of him, and he uttered a despairing shriek; but he cooled down as he found that he was only to be made a prisoner, and was thrust below, with Jimmy dancing a war-dance round him as he went, the said dance consisting of bounds from the deck and wavings of his waddy about his head.
As the Malay was secured, Jack Penny rose from his seat and walked to the side of the vessel, to spit into the water with every sign of disgust upon his face.
“Yah!” he said; “I wouldn’t squeak like that, not if they hung me.”
“Well, let’s see,” cried the captain, catching him by the collar; “hanging is the punishment for stowaways, my fine fellow.”
“Get out!” said Jack, giving himself a sort of squirm and shaking himself free. “You ain’t going to scare me; and, besides, you know what you said. I say, though, when are we going to have something to eat?”