The sailor's earnest words frightened Roy, but did not deter him from carrying out the bold plan he had suddenly formed in his mind. Casting his eye around the deck to make sure that the mate with the rope's end was nowhere in sight, he moved swiftly along the weather rail, until he thought he saw a chance to dart over to the other side without being seen. He crossed the deck with a few quick steps and looked over into the water. There was the boat, still right side up, and her painter was within easy reach of his hand. More than that, as if to encourage him in his desperate resolve, the flash from the light-ship, now close aboard, burst through the gloom, and showed him everything as plainly as though it had been broad daylight. The dark waves with their white caps looked very threatening, but so did the prospect he had before him of making a long voyage under brutal officers and in an unseaworthy vessel.
"It's now or never," thought Roy, shutting his teeth hard and calling all his courage to his aid. "In five minutes more that light-ship will be so far out of reach—"
Just then something took him full in the eye, and Roy, who had bent over while working at the boat's painter, straightened up with a jerk, and flopped down upon his back. Scarcely realizing what had happened to him, the boy scrambled to his feet only to receive a blow in the other eye, and to hear the mate shout at him, in tones of suppressed fury:
"Going to desert, were you? I expected it, and have had my gaze fastened on you all along. Take that and that, and see if it will do you until I can get a better chance at you."
Did the enraged officer intend to kill him where he lay? Roy wondered, as he raised his arm to ward off the heavy blows from the rope's end that were aimed at his head. It is quite possible that the brute would have disabled him had not the captain, who had witnessed the whole proceeding, called out:
"Cast the boat adrift, Mr. Crawford. That will put an end to all such nonsense."
The officer turned to obey the order, and in an instant Roy was on his feet. At the same instant, too, the sailor's warning words came into his mind like an inspiration: "Don't allow yourself to be brought back, for if you do you will wish you had never been born. You'd better sink right here in the harbor than trust yourself to this ship and her officers," and something the mate said while he was striking at him with the rope's end satisfied Roy that there was more punishment of some sort coming as soon as the officer could find time to administer it.
"Another such a beating as that would lay me up sure," thought Roy, drawing his hand across his face and looking around to see where he was. "I can't stand it and I won't."
Roy sprang away from the rail, but quick as the action was, the movement the vigilant officer made to defeat it was almost as quick. His brawny hand shot out like a flash, and by the merest chance missed a hold upon Roy's arm. His strong fingers fastened into the boy's shirt-sleeve, and during the brief but furious struggle that followed either the stitches or cloth gave away. At any rate when the mate straightened up he was holding the sleeve of Roy's shirt in his grasp, and Roy himself, having cleared the deck in two or three jumps, was standing upon the lee rail.
"Come back here, you villain," roared the mate, starting forward, "or I'll haze you till you'll be glad to go overboard in mid-ocean."