“Yes,” said Walters, shortly. “You’ll be getting into trouble. You’d better, now you’re so new, let me lead, and I’ll tell you all that you want to know.”
“Mind your eyes, youngsters,” sang out a good-looking, youngish man, “Now, my lads, right under, and lash it fast.”
“Second mate,” whispered Walters to me, as about a dozen men dragged a great spar, evidently an extra top-mast, close under the bulwarks, to secure it tight out of the way.
“Quite right, youngster,” said the officer, who seemed to have exceedingly sharp ears, and then he gave me a nod.
“Hang him and his youngsters,” grumbled Walters as we went forward. “He has no business to speak like that before the men.”
“Oh, what does it matter?” I said. “Look there, at that thin gentleman and the young lady who came on board yesterday evening. He must be ill. Oh! mind,” I cried, and I sprang forward just in time to catch the gentleman’s arm, for as he came out of the cabin entrance, looking very pale, and leaning upon the arm of the lady, he caught his foot in a rope being drawn along the deck, and in spite of the lady clinging to him he would have fallen if I had not run up.
“Don’t!” he cried angrily, turning upon me. “Why do you leave your ropes about like that?”
“John, dear!”
Only those two words, spoken in a gentle reproachful tone, and the young lady turned to me and smiled.
“Thank you,” she said; “my brother has been very ill, and is weak yet.”