“Perhaps I am; but fellows that have been at sea for a month are rather glad of a chance to stretch their legs on shore. They wouldn’t do so, when I told them they might; and I don’t believe such a thing was ever heard of before. Besides, they all looked as though they were up to something, and just as though they had a big secret in their heads.”
“Perhaps you were right, but I don’t believe you were,” said Norwood, too bluntly for good manners, and too bluntly for the harmony of the officers’ mess.
“I suppose I am responsible for the smashing of the second cutter, but I was trying to do my duty,” replied De Forrest, vexed at the implied censure of his superior.
“If you had staid at the pier this could not have happened.”
“But something else might have happened; and if my crew had run away, I should have been blamed just as much,” growled the second lieutenant.
“You were too sharp for your own good—that is all. But I don’t mean to blame you, De Forrest,” said Norwood, with a patronizing smile. “Perhaps I should have done the same thing if I had been in your place.”
“Stand by to lay on your oars!” shouted the coxswain, as the boat approached the water-logged second cutter. “Oars!”
The crew stopped pulling, and levelled their oars.
“In, bows! Stand by the boat-hooks!” continued the coxswain; and the two forward oarsmen grasped the boat-hooks, and took their station in the fore-sheets. “Hold water.” And the ten oars dropped into the water as one, checking the onward progress of the cutter.
The bowmen fastened to the second cutter, and recovering her painter, passed it astern to the coxswain, who made it fast to a ring on the stern-board. By this time the steamer, with the luckless crew of the stove boat, had disappeared behind an island. The first cutter pulled back to the ship, and De Forrest immediately reported to the first lieutenant, and explained his conduct in presence of the principal and the captain. He detailed his reasons for supposing his crew intended to run away, or to play some trick upon him.