He hated the vision which was in immediate prospect of the little weasel-faced captain with his pointed red beard, reciting by rote yet another string of idiotic sentences from a manual; he hated the vision of the next step, the men in blue, with their violence and their closing of his mouth by brutal means. Whether he could convince a magistrate he did not pause to inquire. The way was too long—it was a dark corridor leading to Doom.
He heard a second voice calling the boy to the accompaniment of oaths quite novel and individual and in a high voice that he had not yet heard, and he thought that his hour had come.
But the boy’s reply undeceived him.
“Oi dursn’t!” he yelled down the decks, “Oi gotter look arter th’ Skunk.”
Apparently, thought George bitterly, he already had a fixed traditional name aboard the Lily, like Blacky and the Old Man.
The cook, for it was he, emerged from the galley aft, stood in the brilliant sunlight and delivered rapid blasphemy with tremendous velocity and unerring aim.
The boy whimpered and was irresolute.
If the threats of the mate had been less practical, those of the cook might have had less effect, but between the prospect of the excision of his liver and of a series of hearty buffets and mighty kicks endways, what reasonable youth would hesitate in a civilisation such as ours?
The boy faltered visibly, and turning upon the Skunk informed him once again that he was always gettin’ people inter trouble. Nay, more, he threatened to pay out the innocent cause of his despair for the divided duty in which he found himself.
The cook re-emerged; he had fixed on a new belt of ammunition and began firing in a manner if possible more direct and devastating and quite as rapid, as that which had distinguished the first volley. And the boy, who was, after all, more directly the servant of the cook than of any one else on board, wavered and broke. With a clear statement of the consequences should Demaine move an inch from the spot, and a promise to return before a man could spit to leeward, the boy dashed off to the galley, and for perhaps five seconds, perhaps ten, the prospective Warden of the Court of Dowry was free.