"Well, you can imagine what that sounded like to the men. Twenty of them were grinning and both mates aghast. I was the master, a man known the world over as a 'driver.' There was nothing to do but take the lad in hand at once.
"'Take him forward and rope's-end him,' I said to Bowles, the second officer, a man weighing two hundred pounds and a 'bucko' of the strongest type. You remember him, the toughest mate afloat?
"But Willie looked up at me with a sneer.
"'You try it, you sea loafer. I'll sweat youse fer it if youse do. You ain't de whole thing aboard here. Youse don't know me, I guess.'
"I had to do it. The affair had gone too far. Bowles grabbed him by the collar and lifted him off his feet, and he let out a scream like a wildcat—a most unearthly shriek. Bowles whipped him good and hard, tanned him so he could scarcely sit down; but he just cursed and swore at the officer, telling him what he'd do to him afterward. He got an extra lick or two for this. Bowles paid no attention, but went back to his station to attend lines. Half an hour later he was standing at the rail when I saw a form shoot out of the galley door and drive a long knife into his back. He sank down without a word, and Willie stood over him ready for the finish. The mate knocked him down with a belaying pin before he could kill.
"It was a terrible thing, an awful state of affairs beginning within five minutes after the tug had let go. It was uncanny. A young boy doing such things aboard a ship. I would have put him ashore at once, but remembered the articles he had signed and the words of the president of the line. I hesitated and the opportunity was lost——"
"I would have made another," I interrupted. "I would have sent the young villain to prison at once. No good could possibly happen from such an agreement, no good come from a horrible little devil like that."
"I don't know. I don't quite know yet what to make of it all. According to the usual rule there could be no good from a boy who would deliberately commit such a crime; but we men who know life, the real life, know that rules are not good to follow. You know that. I've tried to figure it all out, but there is no answer, no accounting for the strangeness of character that develop under certain conditions. We tied Willie up while he was unconscious from the blow of the pin, and instead of putting Bowles ashore we endeavored to bring him around. I took him aft and sewed up the cut. It was an awful wound, but Bowles was a very strong man. It took a month before he could get about the deck again. We had run clear to the equator.
"In the meantime Willie had had another run in, and I had him brought aft to have a little talk with him, to try and explain to him how a ship must be run, the iron discipline and the custom of the master not to associate with any one, either boy or man, from forward.
"'Aw, cut it out, cully—cut de langwidge! It don't go none wid me—see? I comes aboard dis ship an' gets it in de neck de foist round. Den I slings inter de bloke wot does the trick—'n by rights I ought ter take a fall outer youse, Cap—'n I've a good mind to do it, too. Dem sea tricks don't go none wid me.'