"But—why did you bring—" mumbled Martin.
"We had to fetch you along," interrupted Little Billy. "If the bosun had left you behind, those yellow devils would have finished you, or else the police would have nabbed you. The police were at our heels when we made the getaway from the wharf, as it was. By Jove! It was for your own benefit we shanghaied you—you realize, don't you, that a street fight with guns in a civilized town like Frisco, with wounded, perhaps dead, men lying around, makes a rather serious business? But don't you worry any about the future. Everything is rosy. We are safe at sea, and booming along with a gale at our backs. The law may have gobbled up Wild Bob Carew and his crew—hope it did, but suspect my haughty captain squirmed out of it as he usually does. We have made our getaway, anyhow."
At sea! Disturbing visions were dancing through Martin's mind. At sea!
It was one thing to stand in an office window, idly watching passing ships, and longing to be at sea. It was quite another thing to awaken without foreknowledge, in a stuffy and careening berth, on a strange ship that was plowing through a storm, possessed of a wounded head and a gadabout stomach, and be informed casually by a grinning gnome that he was fleeing the law—that he had been kidnaped so he would avoid the consequences of a wild and deadly street brawl.
A man accustomed to rough buffets and fickle fortune might well blink his eyes over such a situation. To Martin, the clerk, to whose law-abiding existence both fights and police had hitherto been strangers, the information was more than a shock. It was an earthquake. His world was tumbling about his ears.
The jolt galvanized him to action. He sat up in his bunk and swung his legs over the side. For a second he had some wild idea of rushing forth, and somehow stepping ashore, and back into yesterday. Then he steadied himself.
"But what will I do?" he demanded of the hunchback. "Where are you going? I am not a sailor, I am a clerk—and my job——"
"My friend," said Little Billy, "I think you may definitely assume that your connection with the legal profession is severed. Your job is close on two hundred miles astern. But as I told you a moment since, you need not worry about your future. Why, you have already been adopted into the happy family—you are already one of the jolly company of the brig Cohasset, with equal rights, and an equal share. And if we have decent luck with this job ahead of us, you will have no cause to grieve at being yanked out of your berth ashore. It isn't so bad, is it? We know you leave no family behind—oh, yes, we know quite a lot about you, Martin Blake, we had to look you up—and I think you will be blessing us in a day or two for prying you out of your rut. You are the right sort. You were never cut out for a clerk! By Jove! You should hear the bosun tell how you bowled over Carew, himself, with your empty gun! You are a nervy one, all right. I'll wager this business ahead of us will be more to your liking than the one you leave behind."
"What is it?" asked Martin. "Where are you going?"
"Not my story—I can't tell you, now," answered Little Billy. "You'll find out tonight, after supper. There will be a pow-wow in the cabin, and the Old Man and Miss Ruth will enlighten you then."