A favorable breeze had sprung up, and the scow, now discharged of her sand, took her departure for a new load. I stood on the wharf and waved her adieu; and that was the last I ever saw of her, or of the noble fellow who united in his own person her captain, mates, and crew.
I may have felt a little more alone in the world now, for I remember I did not go back to my jolly play-fellows, the white-fish barrels, but boarded divers steamboats instead, in quest of work. I received the same prompt answer from all. They did not want me. As will be supposed, my one suit of clothes was by this time beginning to show marks of the service it had done among the greasy platters of pantries and cabins. This fact, probably, was the greatest barrier to my success, and the cause, too, of most of the rough language I received in answer to my applications.
Toward night I became desperately hungry, for, it will be remembered, my last warm meal was the dinner of the day before eaten upon the little steamer Arrow, on the way from Toledo. Weary with repeated refusals from steward after steward, I went boldly at last on board of the steamer Pacific and inquired for the captain.
It was straightway demanded of me what such a beggar as I wanted of the captain. I resented the term “beggar” immediately: I purposed to work for what I got; I had money, if it came to that, in proof of which I jingled defiantly the five pennies in my pocket. No; I was no beggar, but I must see the captain.
Carrying my point, finally, I was led to the room of the commander, whom I found to be a short, red-faced man with a voice like a nor’wester. He was leaning back on a camp-chair, with his feet in a berth, and smoking his after-supper cigar. To his gruff “What do you want with me?” I replied meekly that I desired to wash dishes or do anything for something to eat, that I had had nothing but a few crackers and some bread and molasses in thirty-six hours, that I had applied to his steward that afternoon and had been refused, and that I was forced finally to come to him hungry and wanting work.
“What’s your name?” demanded the captain; “and who are you, and where do you come from?”
I answered the first part of his question, but he noticed I hesitated after that. He gave me laconically to understand that I must tell him who I was, or starve for all of him. I was forced to comply; that is, saying nothing about Buffalo, I mentioned my uncle, the ship-owner in Toledo.
This was a fatal mistake, as I learned very soon to my sorrow. The captain’s eye became suddenly and maliciously bright, and his face redder than ever. For as many as ten awful seconds he mangled his cigar fiercely and silently between his teeth. Then there proceeded from his mouth, in addition to the smoke he had swallowed in his wrath, a terrible volley of oaths and curses, of which my uncle’s heart and eyes were the objects.
This captain, as came to my knowledge afterward, had been discharged from the employ of my uncle for some shortcoming or other; and he now proposed, it seems, to take his revenge. He sent hastily for one of the cabin-waiters, and ordered him, in my hearing, to take me to a state-room, give me a light supper, and then lock me in.
“I’m goin’,” said the captain,—and how well I remember his words,—“I’m goin’ to take him to the House of Vagrancy in the mornin’; and then write to that old villain, his uncle, to come and take him out.” The captain furthermore told the waiter to “bear a hand” and keep me safe, till he should call for me the next morning. He always thought, and now he was sure, he would get even with that uncle of mine, whose pride he was going to take down; and I was borne away through another deluge of the captain’s oaths.