And Brother Bart tottered away, leaving Dan standing hot and defiant by his new friend, Mr. Wirt.
“Sorry to have made trouble for you,” said that gentleman; “but when I found that good old man wandering sick and distracted over the boat, stirring up everyone in search of a lost boy, there was nothing to do but give him the tip.”
“Freddy may stand it,” said Dan, fiercely; “but I won’t be grannied. What harm is there in staying up here?”
“None at all from our standpoint,” was the reply; “but the good old gentleman looks at things in another light. You’re under his orders,” he said; and there was a faint, mocking note in the words, that Dan was keen enough to hear. He was hearing other things too,—the pant of the engines, the throb of the pulsing mechanism that was bearing him on through darkness lit only by the radiance of those sweeping worlds above; but that mocking note in his new friend’s voice rose over all.
“Orders!” he repeated angrily. “I bet you wouldn’t take any such orders if you were a boy.”
“No, I wouldn’t, and I didn’t” (there was a slight change in the speaker’s voice as he paused to light a cigar), “and you see where it left me.”
“Where?” asked Dan, curiously.
“Adrift,” was the answer,—“like this big boat would be if there was no one to command: beyond rule and law, as that good old friend of yours said just now,—beyond rule and law.”
“Beyond rule and law,—rule and law.” The words began to hammer somehow on Dan’s head and heart as he recalled with waking remorse poor Brother Bart tottering away in the darkness,—Brother Bart, who, as Dan knew, was only doing his duty faithfully, to the boy under his care,—Brother Bart, who, like the steamboat, like the stars, was obeying.
For a moment or two Mr. Wirt puffed at his cigar silently, while the fierce fire that had blazed up in Dan’s breast sank into bounds, mastered by the boy’s better self, even as he had seen Nature’s fierce forces of flame and steam mastered by higher powers to-day.