I strolled up on deck to take up my gangway watch again. If any sailor got ashore it would be over my dead body, I promised myself. I sat there for fully two hours.
There was no sign of life from the fo’c’s’le. Not one man came out to cross that gangway and go ashore.
“Huh!” I gloated to myself, “they’re afraid of me. They know they can’t get away with anything with me here watching.”
I was so full of my own sense of importance and authority that I didn’t suspect anything queer in the silence forward, until the cabin-boy came aft, after taking the dinner basket back to the galley.
“All them guys forrard is ashore and I’m going to go ashore too,” he sniffed at me contemptuously.
“What?” I asked, too surprised to believe I had heard him aright.
“Sure, they all went ashore while you was eating your grub. Nobody left for’ard except the cook.”
What could I do? I had gained Father’s respect only to lose it when his back was turned. I thought at first I’d go ashore and find the sailors in the saloons and bring them back on board before Father got back. That plan wasn’t wise, though, for, if I left, the cabin-boy and the two mates might go ashore in my absence and I would be a complete failure.
I took up the belaying pin and perched myself on the top of the gangway, and waited. I waited until long past midnight before I heard a human sound on the dock. Suddenly my ear caught a thick, throaty song dimly coming from among the cargo piles on the dock:
“McGinty’s back again;