“What a disagreeable brute!” thought Mark as the mate seemed to spend his time in shouting here, finding fault there, and everywhere making himself disagreeable, while the captain looked on once or twice and then got out of the way as fast as he could, and appeared to be generally of no account whatever.
Chapter Four.
How there was an unwelcome Passenger.
“Here, Mark, my boy,” said the captain; “come here and I’ll show you your cabin.”
The lad was standing watching half a dozen men who were reefing a square sail high up on the mainmast, and the process gave him a peculiar sensation of moisture in the hands and chill in the back, for the men were standing upon a rope looped beneath the yard, and apparently holding on by resting the top button of their trousers upon this horizontal spar, their hands being fully occupied with hauling in and folding up the new stiff canvas of the sail.
“I say, father,” he said, “isn’t that dangerous?”
“What, my lad?”
“The work those men are doing.”