The mate suffered him not to lag; nor did he cease to taunt him.
“Youse a sho’ ’nuff born sailor, Mister Jenkins,” he said, and repeated it over several times, as the unwilling victim worked drearily. “You looks jes’ like one of them able-bodied seamen that you been sending down from Baltimore.”
Artie Jenkins groaned, and toiled, hopelessly. He gave out, some time in the afternoon, and Henry Burns was made to take his place. At dusk they stowed away the gear and ran for harbour, in through Hooper strait.
The next day, unusual in the winter season, there fell a dead calm. There was no getting out to the grounds, and the day was spent in overhauling the gear, wrapping parts that were worn with chafing, etc. It was some time that forenoon that Henry Burns, getting a good look at Artie Jenkins, recognized him. It was the young man he had seen on the river steamer, and whose invitation he had resented. Something about the youth repelled him more than before, and he made no attempt to renew that brief acquaintanceship. Yet, observing the treatment Artie Jenkins was receiving, he was sorry for him.
“What makes them so hard on that chap, Jenkins, I wonder?” he asked of Brooks, as they stood together, that afternoon. “It makes my blood boil, but I don’t dare say anything.”
“Hmph!” exclaimed Brooks. “Don’t you let your blood boil for him. He’s getting what he deserves, all right. Didn’t you hear what Jim Adams called him? He’s a crimp.”
“A what?”
“A crimp. Don’t you know what that is? It’s a fellow that drugs men up in Baltimore, and ships ’em down here for ten dollars apiece, when they don’t know it. They wake up aboard here. That happened to me, though this chap didn’t do it. He did the trick, though, for two men that got away the other day. I heard them say it was a fellow named Artie Jenkins that trapped them. One was named Edwards; he was a travelling man of some sort. My, how he did hate the winders. T’other was a young chap; Harvey was his name.”
Henry Burns gave a cry of astonishment.
“Then Jack was aboard here—and he got away, do you say?”