They moved off forward. Then Skipper Tommy took my hand—or, rather, I took his; for I was made ill at ease by the great, wet sweep of the deck, glistening with reflections of bright lights, and by the throng of strange men, and by the hiss of steam and the clank of iron coming from the mysterious depths below. He would show me the cabin, said he, where there was unexampled splendour to delight in; but when we came to a little house on the after deck, where men were lounging in a thick fog of tobacco smoke, I would go no further (though Skipper Tommy said that words were spoken not meet for the ears of lads to hear); for my interest was caught by a giant pup, which was not like the pups of our harbour but a lean, long-limbed, short-haired dog, with heavy jaws and sagging, blood-red eyelids. At a round table, whereon there lay a short dog-whip, his master sat at cards with a stout little man in a pea-jacket—a loose-lipped, blear-eyed, flabby little fellow, but, withal, hearty in his own way—and himself cut a curious figure, being grotesquely ill-featured and ill-fashioned, so that one rebelled against the sight of him.
A gust of rain beat viciously upon the windows and the wind ran swishing past.
“’Tis a dirty night,” said the dog’s master, shuffling nervously in his seat.
At this the dog lifted his head with a sharp snarl: whereupon, in a flash, the man struck him on the snout with the butt of the whip.
The dog regarded him sullenly—his upper lip still lifted from his teeth.
“Eh?” the man taunted. “Will you have another?”
The dog’s head subsided upon his paws; but his eyes never once left his master’s face—and the eyes were alert, steady, hard as steel.
“You’re l’arnin’,” the man drawled.
But the dog had learned no submission, but, if anything, only craft, as even I, a child, could perceive; and I marvelled that the man could conceive himself to be winning the mastery of that splendid brute. ’Twas no way to treat a dog of that disposition. It had been a wanton blow—taken with not so much as a whimper. Mastery? Hut! The beast was but biding his time. And I wished him well in the issue. “Ecod!” thought I, with heat. “I hopes he gets a good grip o’ the throat!” Whether or not, at the last, it was the throat, I do not know; but I do know the brutal tragedy of that man’s end, for, soon, he came rough-shod into our quiet life, and there came a time when I was hot on his trail, and rejoiced, deep in the wilderness, to see the snow all trampled and gory. But the telling of that is for a later page; the man had small part in the scene immediately approaching: it was another. When the wind and rain again beat angrily upon the ship, his look of triumph at once gave place to cowardly concern; and he repeated: