“I’m hanged if I will,” said the mate sturdily. “Why don’t you go down and have it out with her like a man? She can’t eat you.”
“I’m not going to,” said the other shortly. “I’m a determined man, and when I say a thing I mean it. It’s going to be broken to her gradual, as I said; I don’t want her to be scared, poor thing.”
“I know who’d be scared the most,” murmured the mate.
The skipper looked at him fiercely, and then sat down wearily on the hatches with his hands between his knees, rising, after a time, to get the dipper and drink copiously from the water-cask. Then, replacing it with a sigh, he bade the mate a surly good-night and went below.
To his dismay he found when he awoke in the morning that what little wind there was had dropped in the night, and the billy-boy was just rising and falling lazily on the water in a fashion most objectionable to an empty stomach. It was the last straw, and he made things so uncomfortable below that the crew were glad to escape on deck, where they squatted down in the bows, and proceeded to review a situation which was rapidly becoming unbearable.
“I’ve ’ad enough of it, Joe,” grumbled the boy. “I’m sore all over with sleeping on the floor, and the old man’s temper gets wuss and wuss. I’m going to be ill.”
“Whaffor?” queried Joe dully.
“You tell the missus I’m down below ill. Say you think I’m dying,” responded the infant Machiavelli, “then you’ll see somethink if you keep your eyes open.”
He went below again, not without a little nervousness, and, clambering into Joe’s bunk, rolled over on his back and gave a deep groan.
“What’s the matter with you!” growled the skipper, who was lying in the other bunk staving off the pangs of hunger with a pipe.