CHAPTER VII.
IN WHICH PHIL ATTEMPTS TO ESCAPE FROM THE BARK MICHIGAN.
As soon as I saw the face of Mr. Ben Waterford, I retreated to the cabin, and then to the steerage, where my trunk had been deposited. I felt as though I had seen the evil one, and he had laid his hand upon me. I was disgusted and disheartened. I had signed the shipping articles, and it was not easy to escape. Captain Farraday wanted me, or he would not have taken so much pains to induce me to ship. If my trunk had been on deck, I would have hailed a boat and escaped at all hazards; but I could not abandon the relics of my childhood, for I depended upon them to prove that Louise Farringford was my mother.
I asked myself what wicked thing I had done to deserve the fate which was evidently in store for me if I remained on board of the Michigan. Whatever I had done, it seemed to me that my punishment must be more than I could bear. Ben Waterford would be a demon in his relations to me, after the check I had been upon his evil deeds in Chicago. He was a man of violent temper when excited, and I regarded him as a malicious and a remorseless man.
It seemed stranger to me than it will to any of my readers, that this man should now appear in New York as the mate of the bark in which I had shipped. Still there was nothing which could not be easily reconciled, except the fact itself. I had myself heard him say, on board his yacht, when we were sailing on Lake Michigan, that he had been a sailor; that he had made several voyages—two of them as second mate, and one as chief mate. This was precisely the recommendation which had been given to Captain Farraday of his qualifications. He was a good sailor, and I had learned a great deal about vessels from him.
I concluded, after passing the circumstances through my mind, that he had failed in every other kind of business, and had been obliged to go to sea again. But if he was guilty of the forgery in St. Louis of which he was suspected, and of the robbery of my trunk, of which I was tolerably confident, he was well provided with funds; and certainly he was not compelled to go to sea to earn his living, though it would be convenient for him to be in any other locality than the United States for the next few months or years, till the excitement about the forgery had subsided.
The steward's room, where my trunk had been placed, was in the steerage—a rude apartment between decks, next to the cabin. Several rough pine bunks had been built here, for the cabin steward, carpenter, and sail-maker. The two latter were unusual officers on board a Mediterranean vessel. I was thinking in what manner I could get out of the bark, and I walked from the steerage forward. The hatches were off, and the hold was open. The vessel had but little freight, and was really going out in ballast, for a cargo of fruit. I did not wish to show myself to Ben Waterford, if I could possibly avoid it. I concluded that he would be on the quarter-deck with the captain. I went to the hatch, and ascended by the notched stanchion.
The crew were still engaged in their wild orgies, which they considered as mere skylarking; but the oaths and the roughness of their manners led me to avoid them. The captain and the mate were standing near the wheel, talking. I went to the side, and looked over into the water. The boat which had brought off the mate was still there. Two men sat in it, and I hoped I might be able to make a bargain with them to convey me to the shore. If I could escape, I intended to denounce Ben Waterford to the police on shore as the forger and robber, for in this way there was a chance that I might recover my gold.
I went to an open port, and beckoned to the two men in the boat, who appeared to be waiting for something. They obeyed my summons, and came up beneath the port.
"What do you want?" demanded one of them, as he stuck the boat-hook into the side of the bark.