“If you’ll run along and tell the mate, you’ll find out soon enough.”
The boy mounted to the upper deck, clutching now and then at the rail. Judging from the grin on his face as he came running back, he had added a new word to his vocabulary.
“The mite says for you to come up on the bridge quick. ’E’s bloomin’ mad.”
I climbed again to the hurricane-deck. The mate’s anger had so overcome him that he had left his post and waited for me at the foot of the bridge-ladder. He was burly and heavy-jawed, bare-headed, bare-footed, his hairy chest showing, his duck trousers rolled up to his knees, and his thick tangle of disordered hair waving in the wind. With a ferocious scowl and set jaw, he glared at me in silence.
“I’m a sailor, sir,” I began. “I was on the beach in Port Said. I’m sorry, sir, but I had to get away—”
The mate gave no other sign of having heard than to push his heavy jaw farther out.
“There was no chance to sign on a ship there, sir. Not a man shipped in months, sir, and it’s a tough place to be on the beach—”
“What has that got to do with me and my ship!” roared the officer, springing several yards into the air, and coming down to shake his sledge-hammer fist under my nose. “I’ll give you six months for this directly we get to Colombo. You’ll stow away on my ship, will you? Get down off this deck before I brain you with this bucket!”
Not certain as to what part of the Worcestershire he wanted me to go, I started forward. Another bellow brought me to a halt.
“You—” But never mind what words he used. The new order was that I was to wait in the waist until the captain had seen me.