“Is this the way you try to get even with me?” cried the angry man, slapping Tim first on one side of the head and then on the other with a force that made his teeth chatter. “What do you mean by such actions? Answer me! What do you mean?”
“I don’t mean anything,” said the boy, piteously. “I was comin’ in all right, when the boat tipped up, an’ I slid right along. I was sea-sick, an’ I couldn’t help it.”
“I’ll show you how to get over your sea-sickness, and you won’t forget how it’s done, either;” and as the captain spoke he resumed his cheerful occupation of slapping Tim’s face. “You think I am going to have any lubbers around here sick, do you?”
“I can’t help it, sir,” moaned Tim, who had by this time lost all feeling of nausea in the pain caused by the blows.
“Then I’ll help it for you,” roared the captain, and he flogged Tim until he thought he had been punished enough to cure him.
“Now see if that will help you,” he said, savagely, as he stood Tim on his feet with a force that caused him to bite his tongue. “Keep on deck now, and let me see you every ten minutes. If you so much as think of laying down I’ll give you such a taste of the rope’s end that you’ll think all this was only fooling.”
It seemed to Tim as if either the flogging or the sickness would have been sufficient alone, but to have both filled his heart with all the sadness and grief it could well contain.
He went below, where Bobby was waiting for him, and the sight of his tear-filled eyes, and face red with the marks of the whipping, told the young gentleman from Minchin’s Island that there were very many positions in the world more pleasant than that of captain’s boy on board the Pride of the Wave.
“What is the matter, Tim?” he asked, in a half-whisper.