“And you don’t know what a stowaway is, eh?”
“No, sir.”
“If you’ll run along and tell the mate, you’ll find out soon enough.”
The boy made his way aft, clutching, now and then, at the rail, and mounted to the upper deck. 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 bloody mad.”
I climbed again to the hurricane deck. The mate’s sanguinary choler had so overcome him that he had deserted his post and waited for me at the foot of the bridge ladder. He was burly and lantern-jawed, clad in the négligé of early morning in the tropical seas; bareheaded, barefooted, his hairy chest agap, his duck trousers rolled up to his knees, and a thick tangle of dishevelled hair waving in the wind. With the ferocious mien of an executioner, he glared at me in utter silence.
“I’m a sailor, sir,” I began; “I was on the beach in Port Saïd. I’m sorry, sir, but I had to get away—”
The mate gave no other sign of having heard than to push his massive jaw further out.
“There was no chance to sign on there, sir. Not a man shipped in months, sir, and it’s a tough place to be on the beach—”
“What the holy hell has that got to do with me and my ship!” roared the officer, springing several yards into the air and descending to shake his sledge-hammer fist under my nose. “You —— ——, I’ll give you six months for this directly we get to Colombo. You’ll stow away on my ship, will you? Get to hell down off this deck before I brain you with this bucket, you —— ——,” but his subsequent remarks, like his attire, were for early morning use, and would have created a even greater furor in that vicinity, a few hours later, than his bare legs.