“Sleep sound enough, don’t they?” remarked the skipper.
“Yes,” answered Hank Hoffer. “Drunken men always do.”
It was broad daylight when Breeze awoke, cramped and stiff from lying so long on the bare boards of the transom. As he sat up and looked about him, his thoughts were in such confusion that he could not for a moment recall where he was. Seeing Wolfe Brady asleep in the bunk beside him brought back the events of the preceding evening with a rush, and starting up, he went on deck. There a single glance showed him that they were out of sight of land and heading to the eastward.
A young man whose face looked somewhat familiar to him was at the wheel, though he could not recollect where he had seen it.
“Hello!” exclaimed this individual. “Turned out, have yer? Feel any better than you did last night?”
Breeze started at the sound of the voice. It was that of Wolfe Brady’s companion of the night before, of whose face he had not at any time obtained a good view, but whom he now recognized. “What do you mean,” he asked, stepping up to the young man, “by playing such a trick on me? How dared you lock us into that cabin and bring us off in this way?”
“Ho, ho!” laughed the other, “I dare do almost anything. As for what I meant by it, I told you a while ago that I’d get even with you for laughing at me when that mackerel seine broke and pitched us all overboard. I’ve only kept my word.”
Now it flashed across Breeze where he had seen the face before. It was while on his trip in the Curlew, and this young man had been one of the crew of the Rockhaven schooner--the one who had shaken his fist and threatened him for laughing at their ridiculous mishap.
“I laid up another grudge agin you yesterday,” continued Hank Hoffer. “When I went to Captain Coffin and asked for a chance on the Fish-hawk, he said he had just engaged you and your mate, and didn’t want any more hands. So I had to ship on this old packet. When I found your mate hanging around alone last evening, I saw a chance to fix him, and thought I’d get even with you that way. Then you had to come along, like the greenhorn that you are, and walk right into the trap too. I tell you what, young feller, you won’t never gain nothing by running afoul the hawse of Hank Hoffer! So put that in your pipe and smoke it, and see that you remember it too.”
It was all plain enough to Breeze now, and he turned away angry and heart-sick, to think that his own carelessness should have led him into such a predicament. He thought he could not feel any worse than he did, but a minute later he found himself confronted by a new trouble, beside which the other became insignificant.