“Rupert!” was the answer, given in the same cautious tone.
“All right,” exclaimed the officer. “I thought you were never coming. Stand by there, one of you, to catch the painter. Cap’n,” he added, thrusting his head down the companion way, “the boat’s come.”
Guy, being the nearest at hand, caught the painter as it came whirling up to him, and as he drew the boat up to the ladder that was quickly lowered over the side, he was surprised to see that she was loaded almost to the water’s edge.
A number of bundles and chests were piled in the bow, and the bottom was covered with men—probably a dozen or fifteen of them in all—who appeared to be asleep. Of those who managed the yawl one was Rupert, the boarding-house keeper, and the others were two of his assistants, who had rushed into the bar-room to quell the fight, or rather to help it along.
Guy recognized them at once. He wondered what they were going to do with the men who were lying on the bottom of the boat, and was not long in finding out.
The men must have been slumbering heavily, for the landlord and his assistants made no effort to arouse them, but lifting them in their arms, one after the other, carried them up the ladder and laid them in a row on the deck, as if they had been dead men.
The last one who was brought over the side was Dick Flint, limp and lifeless like the rest. Guy was greatly horrified and disgusted to see his friend in such a condition. He had been almost twenty-four hours trying to sleep off the effect of the “blow out” at which he had assisted. He must have been very drunk indeed.
“I wish to goodness I had stayed ashore,” said Guy, almost ready to cry with vexation. “I don’t want a drunkard for my companion, and I’ll tell Flint so at the very first opportunity. I believe home is the best place for a boy after all. If he gets whipped and scolded sometimes when he doesn’t deserve it, he always has plenty to eat, a good bed to sleep in, and isn’t obliged to associate with such wretches as these. Halloo! what is the captain up to, I wonder?”
The men had all been carried to the deck by this time, and now a piece of iniquity was enacted that struck Guy dumb with amazement. The captain and his mate, accompanied by the boarding-house keeper, approached the place where the sailors were lying. The former held in his hands a pen and a roll of paper, which proved to be the shipping articles Guy had signed in the agent’s office; the mate carried an inkstand and Rupert a lantern.
“What is this man’s name?” asked the captain, stopping at the head of the row and pointing with his pen toward one of the prostrate sailors.