“Sir?” said Harry, aghast.
“Away you go!” said the mate, snatching a whip’s end.
“Don’t strike me!” screamed Harry, drawing himself up.
“Take that, and along with you,” cried the mate, laying the rope once across his back, but lightly.
“By heaven!” cried Harry, wincing—not with the blow, but the insult: and then making a dash at the mate, who, holding out his long arm, kept him lazily at bay, and laughed at him, till, had I not feared a broken head, I should infallibly have pitched my boy’s bulk into the officer.
“Captain Riga!” cried Harry.
“Don’t call upon him” said the mate; “he’s asleep, and won’t wake up till we strike Yankee soundings again. Up you go!” he added, flourishing the rope’s end.
Harry looked round among the grinning tars with a glance of terrible indignation and agony; and then settling his eye on me, and seeing there no hope, but even an admonition of obedience, as his only resource, he made one bound into the rigging, and was up at the main-top in a trice. I thought a few more springs would take him to the truck, and was a little fearful that in his desperation he might then jump overboard; for I had heard of delirious greenhorns doing such things at sea, and being lost forever. But no; he stopped short, and looked down from the top. Fatal glance! it unstrung his every fiber; and I saw him reel, and clutch the shrouds, till the mate shouted out for him not to squeeze the tar out of the ropes. “Up you go, sir.” But Harry said nothing.
“You Max,” cried the mate to the Dutch sailor, “spring after him, and help him; you understand?”
Max went up the rigging hand over hand, and brought his red head with a bump against the base of Harry’s back. Needs must when the devil drives; and higher and higher, with Max bumping him at every step, went my unfortunate friend. At last he gained the royal yard, and the thin signal halyards—, hardly bigger than common twine—were flying in the wind. “Unreeve!” cried the mate.