“Can’t you eat a little, my hearty? Here’s a nice bit I have brought you.”
As he spoke, he uncovered the dish and exposed to Tom’s view a piece of fat pork swimming in gravy.
If there is any thing a sea-sick person dislikes, it is the sight of greasy meat; and the thought of eating a piece of that the sailor brought him, operated on Tom like an emetic. It was fully an hour before he recovered from this new plan of torture; and when he became able to think the matter over, he resolved to go to the captain and have the sailor punished. Shortly after noon, having become somewhat accustomed to the rocking of the vessel, his sickness began to abate, and Tom thought he might muster up strength enough to walk to the cabin.
Slowly rising from his bunk, he crawled up the stairs, and the first man he met, when he reached the deck, was the second mate, the very one of all others he most dreaded to see.
“Ah! You’re up again, are you?” exclaimed the officer. “I hope you feel better!”
Tom was surprised to be addressed in so kind a tone by the man who had treated him so roughly the night before, and he began to think that, perhaps, the mate was not so bad after all.
“Where are you going?” continued the officer, as Tom moved toward the companion-way.
“I am going to see the skipper,” was the answer. “I want some of these men put in irons!”
“Well, Tommy!” said the mate, “never mind the captain now. He’s asleep, and you had better not disturb him. He’ll be better natured if you let him have his after-dinner nap out. But what have the men been doing to you?”
“Why, they won’t let me alone!” said Tom. “They keep bothering me all the time; and I won’t stand it, when my father owns the schooner. I came here to learn to be a sailor, not to be laughed at, and told that I look like a ‘Dutch galliot under bare poles.’”