Mark shrank for a moment but seized the rope the next, and slid down so quickly that his hands felt uncomfortably warm, and he reached the deck as Billy Widgeon was unfastening the rope from round Jimpny’s chest.
“Nice sorter sailor that, Captain Strong,” said Mr Gregory sourly.
“Yes,” said the captain quietly. “Don’t send him aloft again. Let him help the cook.”
“Help the cook! Do you want to poison us, sir?”
“No. The man has no nerve, but he may prove himself useful some other way.”
“You are a brave boy,” said a pleasant silvery voice behind Mark, and turning sharply round, it was to see the major’s little daughter hurrying toward the cabin, in which she disappeared.
“There, go below,” said the mate angrily, “and don’t show yourself to me again for a week.”
The stowaway rose and crept away, looking sideways at the sea, and somehow Mark could not help feeling sorry for his pitiful case.
Mark did not feel as if he had been brave, and as they sat at tea that evening and he looked across at where Mary O’Halloran was seated with her mother, he said to himself that if she knew all he had thought up aloft and what his sensations were she would have looked upon him as an impostor.
He felt so uncomfortable all that evening, and worried, that he longed to get away by himself, for the conversation seemed to be all about him.