CHAPTER VIII.
The Boy Dresses Up in His Sunday Clothes and Tells the Captain He Is Ready to Die—The Crew Throw a Steer Overboard to Feed a School of Sharks—The Boy Produces His New Electric Battery—The Bad Boy Makes a Trip to France to Meet His Pa.
I never slept a wink that night after the phosphorus episode, which I painted the wild steer so it looked like a four-legged ghost, and scared the crew so they nearly deserted the ship, because the captain ordered, as I supposed, that I be cast overboard the next morning, to give the sharks a meat sandwich, and all night I tried to prepare myself for death, though I could not help thinking that in some way I would escape.
The next morning I got up and collected all the shoes of the officers and got a blacking brush and began blacking them. Soon there was trouble, because every man missed his shoes, and they began to hunt for them, and they found me working at the shoes and singing, “Pull for the shore, brother,” and such pious hymns.
I was dressed up in my Sunday clothes, and when the captain got his shoes he wanted to know what was the meaning of my sudden industry, and the funeral aspect all around, and I told him I had heard him tell the crew to chuck me overboard, and I was preparing myself for death, and I gave him a letter to mail to Pa, after I was gone, and told the captain I was ready. “Why, you dumb fool,” said the captain, “it was not you I meant to throw overboard, but that phosphorus steer that we killed last night. They are hauling it up out of the hold now with the tackle. We will save you for a worse fate.”
Well, I never felt so happy in my life as I did when that dead steer came up through the hatchway, and was launched over the side, and when I saw the flock of sharks jump on the steer and begin to hunt for the tenderloin, I let out a yell for joy that sounded like the cry of a timber wolf.
Then I got what was coming to me. The captain gave me a swat across the jaw for making noise enough to scare the crew into mutiny, the mate gave me a kick when I started for the cook’s galley, and several of the under officers hit me, and by the time I got my apron on to help cook dinner I was bruised and mad, and decided to get even with the captain. I am a peaceful citizen until somebody walks on my frame, then I become a terror to the foe.
When we began to fry the beef for dinner I told one of the crew that it was a shame to feed men on steer meat, when the steer had died in its stall of Texas fever or rhinderpest, and before we got the meat cooked, ready for the dinner of the officers and crew, every man but the officers had talked over the dead steer, and resolved that they would not eat it, and when they sat down to the table, and I began to bring in the meat, they all looked like a mob of anarchists ready to murder somebody, and I helped all I could by saying in a whisper, “This is perfectly good meat, but this is a good day to fast, and you will live longer.” The officers at the other end of the cabin were eating the steer all right, but the crew never touched it, confining themselves to the bread and coffee, and pretty soon one of the crew proposed that they show their displeasure by taking the meat and throwing it at the officers.
Well, if I live a million years I will never have so much fun again. About thirty men got up and grabbed the meat I had put on their plates, and began to throw it at the captain and mate, and all the officers, and of all the greasy mess I ever saw, that was the worst. The captain got up on a chair and pulled a revolver, and asked what was the cause of the assault, and was going to shoot, when the crew drew revolvers and told him that if he pulled a trigger they would annihilate every officer on the boat, and take charge of it themselves, and run it into the first port. He said the crew could stand anything except eating diseased cattle, and that they drew the line at steers that had died of rhinderpest.