The mate made no reply, but sat silently steering, keeping, however, a wary eye on the boat towing behind. He turned sick and faint as he thought of the consequences of his action, and vainly cast about in his mind for some means of escape.
“Are you going to let me come aboard?” presently demanded the skipper, who was shivering in his wet clothes.
“You can come aboard on my terms,” repeated the mate doggedly.
“I’ll make no terms with you,” cried the other. “I hand you over to the police directly I get ashore, you mutinous dog. I’ve got a good witness in my head.”
After this there was silence—silence unbroken through the long hours of the night as they slowly passed. Then the dawn came. The side-lights showed fainter and fainter in the water; the light on the mast shed no rays on the deck, but twinkled uselessly behind its glass. Then the mate turned his gaze from the wet, cheerless deck and heaving seas to the figure in the boat dragging behind. The skipper, who returned his gaze with a fierce scowl, was holding his wet handkerchief to his temple. He removed it as the mate looked, and showed a ghastly wound. Still, neither of them spoke. The mate averted his gaze, and sickened with fear as he thought of his position; and in that instant the skipper clutched the painter, and, with a mighty heave, sent the boat leaping towards the stern of the barge, and sprang on deck. The mate rose to his feet; but the other pushed him fiercely aside, and picking up the handspike, which lay on the raised top of the cabin, went below. Half an hour later he came on deck with a fresh suit of clothes on, and his head roughly bandaged, and standing in front of the mate, favoured him with a baleful stare.
“Gimme that helm,” he cried.
The mate relinquished it.
“You dog!” snarled the other, “to try and kill a man when he wasn’t looking, and then keep him in his wet clothes in the boat all night. Make the most o’ your time. It’ll be many a day before you see the sea again.”
The mate groaned in spirit, but made no reply.
“I’ve wrote everything down with the time it happened,” continued the other in a voice of savage satisfaction; “an’ I’ve locked that handspike up in my locker. It’s got blood on it.”