“Not if he was cabin boy,” returned Bob. “Cabin boys eat at the officers’ mess.”
“Who said he was cabin boy?” asked Dan. “I’ll bet he was just a—a sort of apprentice. Why can’t we have him up here and hear what the row is?”
“They might see him from the tug,” said Tom, glancing uneasily toward that boat.
“What if they do? They know he’s here, anyhow. Call him up, Nelson.”
And in a moment he appeared at the steps, glanced about him anxiously and diffidently, and stood as though awaiting further instructions. He was a small boy, but he looked hard and healthy. His rather thin face was bronzed by the wind, and the skin on the end of his funny little upturned nose was peeling off, perhaps from the same cause. He didn’t look overly clean, but he had rather nice, honest brown eyes and a serious mouth, at one corner of which, just at present, a flake of pilot bread was adhering. He was dressed in a pair of brown trousers, which were neither long nor short but which left off a good three inches above his shoes, a blue-and-white-striped cotton shirt, guiltless of collar or tie, and a jacket, very much too large for him, of a color once blue and now a queer brownish purple. His hands were broad, and brown and scarred—not at all pretty to look at—with broken and blackened nails. On his touseled brown hair he wore a dirty canvas cap. As the Four observed him for a moment in silence, he took off his cap, awkwardly and hesitatingly, and clutched it in his hands.
“What’s your name?” asked Bob kindly.
“Spencer Floyd,” was the answer in a husky voice that seemed years too old for him.
“Well, Spencer, supposing you sit down there and tell us what the trouble is,” Bob suggested. “Your friend the captain’s after us in the tug back there, but I don’t believe he’ll catch us. What’s the trouble between the captain and you? Let’s hear about it.”
The boy climbed up so that he could see the pursuing tug. He watched it for a moment silently. Then he sat down obediently on the top step and looked at his cap. Evidently he needed prompting.
“Wasn’t the captain good to you?” asked Dan. Spencer shook his head slowly.