At a beckoning gesture the prisoner meekly tried to get on his feet, but he had been shorn of his strength and he fell twice before O’Shea and Johnny Kent grasped him by the arms and steered him in the path that led to the cottage. He stumbled along like a drunken man and had to be half-dragged over the low step at the wood-shed door. Calling himself a soft-hearted old fool, the engineer bustled into the house and dragged forth a spare mattress. O’Shea obtained a lamp in the kitchen, also cold water and a towel to bathe the hurt that his hickory weapon had inflicted.
The red-haired man sat forlornly upon the mattress, leaning against the coal-bin, his hands clasped over his knees. He had the dumb, wistful look of a beaten dog, and his eyes, remarkably blue of color, followed Captain O’Shea with no ill-will, but like one who recognized his master. It was clear enough that he was to be dealt with as a man with a disordered mind, and it was unmanly to hold him accountable for his arson and violence. Attacked unawares in the darkness, there had been provocation for his bestial outbreak, and it was to be concluded that his usual mood was harmless, excepting a fatal fondness for playing with fire.
“I have a strong notion that he is a seafarin’ man,” said O’Shea, as he gave the captive a stiff drink of whiskey from the bottle kept in the hall cupboard. “Maybe this will buck him up and set his tongue going. That’s a sailor’s belt he has on, Johnny. And he has the look of it.”
The engineer had put his spectacles on his nose and was examining the litter of small objects he had fished out of the man’s pockets. One of them was like a leather thong thickened in the middle, and he cried excitedly:
“You’re right, Cap’n Mike. Here’s a sailor’s palm—a sea thimble, and the cuss has mended his clothes with it. See the patch on his shirt, and he has stitched the holes in his shoes with bits of tarred twine.”
“He called me shipmate when he asked for a chew, but many a landlubber uses the word and I did not lay much store by it.”
“It’s only twenty miles to the Maine coast,” said Johnny Kent, “and he may have wandered inland from one of the ports.”
“I have a hunch that he didn’t come out of a coasting schooner. The beggar has sailed deep water in his time. I wonder if he is hungry. Better introduce him to some grub. He is rounding to, but he has about as much conversation in him as an oyster.”
The engineer rummaged in the kitchen and brought out a plate of biscuits, cold bacon, potatoes, and pickles, which the red-haired man ate with an avidity that betokened starvation. The sight moved Johnny Kent almost to tears. The last spark of his animosity was quenched. There was no more awful fate than to be separated from three square meals per day.
“We’ll swab the dirt off him and shuck those ragged, rotten clothes before we batten him down for the night,” said Johnny. “I can’t leave a sailor in this fix, even if he is flighty in the main-top and has tried to smoke out the whole darn neighborhood.”