“Terrence Carson.”
“Well, you little sawed-off, what d’ye want here?”
Terry drew himself up to his full height. His “stubbedness” was the tender point.
“I want to ship,” he declared.
“You want to ship! Haw, haw, haw!”
Captain Carlton fairly shook with laughter.
“Why, your head hardly reaches the rail,” he said, taking the boy by the arm and twisting him about with his face to the shore. “Now, sonny, that’s the way ashore. You git!”
Poor Terry, urged by the captain’s vigorous shove, walked slowly back to the wharf, and thence to the street. Once outside the gate, he stamped his ill-shod foot determinedly upon the rough pavement.
“I just will do it!” he declared. “They can’t keep me off their old vessel, however hard they try. I’m going to sea in the Calypso, I am!”
Thus it happened that, half an hour later, when Captain Carlton left the Calypso and went uptown to look over the men whom the shipping agent had gotten together for him, leaving the vessel in sole charge of the steward, a ragged figure, sneaking along beside the piled-up cases on the dock, darted across the gangplank and onto the Calypso’s deck.