The stoker woke up just as the steel bracelets were being snapped on his wrists. Protesting and threatening, he was dragged to the lazaret, where he was destined to remain for the next twenty-four hours in solitary confinement, with nothing more substantial to live on than bread and water.
CHAPTER XVIII
VISITORS ON THE "RICHMOND"
THE ugly stoker was liberated on the following day after having promised to behave himself in the future. But he held his head low when showing himself on deck, which was seldom. He never permitted his shifting eyes to meet those of Steve Rush, nor did Steve make any effort to address the man. The lad was confident, in his own mind, that Smith was the man who struck him that night by the after deck-house, but the drubbing that Captain Simms had given the fellow made Rush feel that they were now even.
On the way back the ship picked up Mrs. Simms and little Marie at Port Huron. The "Richmond" was on its way to South Chicago with a cargo of coal. This took them around into Lake Michigan, and many were the happy hours spent by the captain's little daughter and the Iron Boys. They played games on deck between watches, as though all three were children. Rush and Jarvis had constituted themselves the special guardians of the little girl, and she queened it over them, making them her willing subjects.
At South Chicago the ship was held up for a week because the company to which the coal was consigned was not ready to receive it. Steve considered this to be bad business policy on the part of the steamship people, and another memorandum went down in his book, to be considered in detail later on.
While at South Chicago the lads made frequent trips into the city, which they had never visited before. One afternoon they took the captain's wife and daughter to a matinee, then out to dinner at a fashionable restaurant.