Mr. Schwartz could not forget that Guy had tried to impose upon him by rating himself as able seaman, when he scarcely knew the maintruck from the kelson, and he did not intend that Guy should forget it either. He never allowed him a moment’s peace while he was on duty, and sometimes, when he felt particularly vindictive, he would keep him on deck long after the rest of the watch had gone below. Guy’s life almost became a burden to him. The only pleasure he found was in looking at the pictures in the “Boy Trappers,” and dreaming of the easy, glorious existence he would lead when once he became a hunter.
When he tumbled into his bunk he would lie awake for hours building his gorgeous air-castles. Under the influence of his lively imagination the walls of his dingy quarters would seem to widen out and loom up until they became lofty, snow-capped mountains; the dreary forecastle, smelling of tar and bilge-water, would become a beautiful glade decked with flowers and embowered with trees; the smoky lantern would grow into a cheerful camp-fire; the weather-beaten walls would change into tall, broad-shouldered hunters and trappers; the chests, which were ranged on one side of the forecastle, would take the shape of horses staked out to graze; and the clothing hanging about would be transformed into buffalo humps and juicy haunches of venison.
Then Guy would imagine himself stretched out on his blanket among these wild, congenial spirits, wearing a coonskin cap and dressed in a full suit of buckskin, gaudily ornamented (he couldn’t be a full-fledged hunter without a coonskin cap and a suit of buckskin, especially the latter, which, according to the cheap novels he had read, always set off the wearer’s “slender, well-knit frame to such good advantage”), his “deadly rifle, with which he could drive a nail or snuff a candle at sixty yards’ distance,” lying by his side; his tomahawk, hunting-knife and lasso hanging from a tree over his head, his fierce wolf-dog that could pull down a buck or throttle an Indian with all ease, reposing at his feet, and his horse, an animal which had carried him safely through many a desperate fight with savages and wild beasts, and which for speed and endurance was never equaled, grazing a little apart from the others and rendered conspicuous by his great size and exceeding beauty.
“And suppose this horse was the celebrated white pacer of the plains,” soliloquized Guy, carried fairly up to the seventh heaven of happiness by his wild dreamings; “a horse that no living man had ever ridden until I caught him with my own lasso and tamed him with my own hands! Ah! And suppose these men were government scouts and I was the chief of them? ‘The Boy Chief of the Rough Riders of the Rocky Mountains!’ Whew! Wouldn’t that be a sounding title, though? Oh, I’m bound to make myself famous before I am ten years older. Dear me, I wonder if this miserable vessel will ever reach San Francisco?”
When Guy dropped to sleep at last it would be to revel in such scenes as this, until the hoarse voice of the second mate brought him back to the realities of earth again. He lived in this way just seven months—how careful he was to count the days as they dragged slowly by—and when at last he was beginning to despair and to believe that the voyage never would have an end, Flint one day pointed out something in the horizon which looked like a cloud, but which he said was land, adding that he had heard the first mate say that if they had no bad luck they would pass the Golden Gate in about three days.
Guy had been waiting most impatiently for this announcement, and now he could not have told whether he was glad or sorry to hear it. He longed to feel the solid ground under his feet once more, but there was an obstacle in the way of his getting there that he dreaded to encounter.
That was the second mate, whose eyes followed every move he made while he was on deck. Since he detected the boy in his attempt to desert the vessel, the officer had been more brutal than he was before; and he had promised, too, that if he caught Guy in any more tricks of that kind he would knock him overboard the very first good chance he got.
Guy believed that the mate fully intended to carry it out. Flint thought so, too, and advised extreme caution. He and Guy held many a long consultation, but could decide upon no definite plan of operations. The only thing the boy could do was to be governed by circumstances, and this time be careful not to act in too great a hurry.
On the afternoon of the fourth day after land was discovered the Santa Maria entered the harbor of San Francisco and came to anchor, where she was to remain a day or two—so Guy heard—before she was hauled into the wharf. No sooner had she swung round to her anchor than one of the boats was put into the water, and when it had been manned the captain came on deck carrying a basket on his arm.
“Pass the word for Thomas,” said he.