“Good boys,” he said, warmly. “It’s a pity poor old Si warn’t found, too.”
I wondered if that was so. It seemed to me that Captain Silas Somes was the man mainly to blame for the tragedy. I could not believe that the onus of it would be heaped upon our second mate.
The boat was hoisted in. Both the Barneys remained unconscious; but Mr. Hollister and the captain declared they would be all right soon. Mr. Alf Barney had not been seriously injured by the falling of the mast. They were taken below and Mr. Hollister took charge of them, with one of his own hands to help in bringing the brothers back to their senses.
The Gullwing quickly felt the tug of the hawser binding her to the Sea Horse and with her sails clewed up she wallowed on through the choppy seas into the broad mouth of the Chesapeake.
No need of aiding the steam-tug by hoisting sail. The race was over. The Seamew had run her course and the Gullwing was the winner. But a sorry winning of the race it proved to be.
Mr. Gates kept both watches at work for a time making the loose spars secure. The steel stays that had been broken had to be reset, or we might have one of our masts coming down as the Seamew’s had.
The work was done before the second dog-watch and then we had a chance to sit down and fraternize with the men from the Seamew.
“What gave the old Seamew her ticket,” said Job Perkins, “was our changing a live man for a dead one. When Clint, here, went over the side and a man that had been garroted came back inboard, I knowed we was in for trouble. And that ten dollars you’re to pay me at Baltimore,” he whispered in my ear, “ain’t going to pay me for the dunnage I lost.”
“How d’ye s’pose that feller got strangled with his lanyard?” demanded another of the Seamew’s men.
“Ask that nigger they’ve got aboard the Gullwing here,” growled another. “He knows. And he’ll hafter tell it to the consul.”