“Yes, come along!” urged the captain. “I’ll send a couple of boys over to bring your chum, and we’ll have a jolly night of it.”
It was useless for Clay to falter or draw back, so he stepped along as if grateful for the invitation. His hope was that Jule would understand the situation of affairs on board the Hawk and stand guard on deck with a good supply of automatic revolvers.
“Where’d you say you came from?” asked the captain as they ascended the stairway to the cabin. “Chicago,” was the short reply.
“Nice town, Chicago,” the captain went on with a leer. “I used to live in Chicago. I know every foot of the North Branch. Goose Island used to be my favorite resort.”
Clay was thinking that if the captain had ever resided in Chicago he must have left it at the request of the police, but did not say so. Reaching the cabin, the captain led Clay to a long, narrow stateroom looking out on the Kentucky shore. He took pains, however, to seat the boy so that he could not look out on the Rambler.
Before seating himself the captain proceeded to a cupboard hanging on the wall and took out two bottles and a siphon. One of the bottles contained whiskey; the other wine.
“It strikes me,” the captain said, “that this moonshine whiskey is a little bit too strong for boys, so I’ll give you a glass of wine. That’s prime wine, too. I bought it in Pittsburg and paid a big price for it. If you were to buy that wine, kiddo, you’d pay about two bits a glass for it. It’s the right kind of stuff.”
“Then I wouldn’t buy it!” Clay answered with a smile. “The fact is,” he continued, “we haven’t got any money to waste on drink, and don’t care for it, anyway.”
The captain went to a faucet with a glass and brought back two goblets of water. Just before he turned away from the faucet Clay was certain that he saw him dropping something into one of the glasses.
“Well,” the captain said, sitting down at the table and pushing one of the glasses over toward Clay, “I don’t urge any boy to drink anything intoxicating, but it would take a lot of this wine to creep up to a man’s head. Perhaps a glass of water will be just as good for you.”