Rio shook his head.
“That’d be too intimate. You don’t carry your school-ship papers all the time, do you?”
“By God!” shouted the mate. “I’ll have you thrown in the brig. It’s hot in the forepeak.”
Rio grinned, a slow, malicious grin.
“And there’s dark nights and twenty-foot shark in the Gulf of Darien—a hell of a place for a snotty little mate to slip.”
The officer walked away. His eyes seemed red in the sun and he seemed to be thinking.
Rio adjusted his goggles and went to work. He liked to see each rusted, brown flake disappear under the blows of his hammer and uncover the bright blue steel below. Suddenly, once more, he felt a knee against his side. The mate had come back. He ordered Rio to move over to the port side and chip rust near the fishplate. Rio crossed the deck, watching from the corner of his eye the vicious look of the officer who was crawling into No. 2 hatch. Rio grinned again.
“A good place for ’im if a freak wave shifts the cargo,” he thought.
He had worked for an hour when he heard men shouting. The captain came down and ran aft, then back to the fore deck. Seeing Rio at work he hurried to him.
“Have you seen the second mate forward?” he asked.