“Now, then,” I exclaimed, pulling some of my old clothes from a locker, “slip on this toggery at once, so your teeth will stop chattering.”
He discarded his dripping garments and replaced them with my dry flannel shirt and blue trousers, my thick socks and low shoes. I picked up his own ragged clothes and with a snort of contempt for their bedraggled and threadbare condition tossed them out of the window into the sea.
“Oh!” he exclaimed, and clutched at his breast.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Nothing. I thought at first you had thrown away mother’s picture; but it’s here, all right,” and he patted his breast tenderly.
“Hungry?” I inquired.
“Yes, sir.” He gave a shiver, as if he had just remembered this condition; and I brought some biscuits and a tin of sardines from my cupboard and placed them before him.
The boy ate ravenously, washing down the food with a draught of water from the bottle in the rack. I waited for him to finish before I questioned him. Then, motioning him to a seat on my bunk, for he seemed weak and still trembled a bit, I said:
“Now, tell me your story.”
“I’m a Texan,” he replied, slowly, “and used to live in Galveston. My folks are dead and an uncle took care of me until a year ago, when he was shot in a riot. I didn’t mind that; he was never very good to me; but when he was gone I had no home at all. So I shipped as a cabin-boy aboard the Gonzales, a tobacco sloop plying between Galveston and Key West, for I always loved the sea and this was the best berth I could get. The Captain, Jose Marrow, is half Mexican and the cruelest man in the world. He whipped me when he was drunk, and abused and cuffed me when sober, and many a time I hoped he would kill me instead of keeping up the tortures I suffered. Finally he came up here with a cargo, and day before yesterday, just as he had unloaded and was about to sail again, he sent me ashore on an errand. Of course I skipped. I ran along the bay and hid in a lumber shed, from the top of which I could watch the Gonzales. She didn’t sail, because old Marrow was bound to have me back, I guess; so I had to lay low, and all the time I was sure he’d find me in the end and get me back. The sloop’s in the bay yet, sir, only about a quarter of a mile away.”