“Yes, sir. Will you please tell me something, Mr. Freeman?”
“Maybe so, if I can. The mate says I don’t know anything.”
“I want to know, sir, how you send off those signal-lights, what I was forbid to touch. Are they like Roman candles?”
Freeman took hold of the youth’s arm, and said sternly, “Dick Lewis, don’t you ever think of those things. Why, d— it, you’re as crazy as a loon about fire-works! If you’ve got any more stowed away in the fo’k’sl, it’ll go hard with you. I’ve got nothing against you, Dick, but if I hear any more talk like this, it’s my duty to report to the captain. You’ll soon be in irons, at this rate.”
“I was only fooling, sir. Please don’t give me away.”
“’Vast talking, and go below. The watch is half over now.”
Dick disappeared into the forecastle, and Freeman meditated for some time over the possible meaning of the boy’s peculiar talk.
“He’ll bear watching,” he mused. “I’d better tell Bohlman not to send him into the lazarette, on any account. No, I won’t, either; the Dutchman’s too d—d arrogant, and thinks he knows it all. I’d only be told to mind my own business.”
Freeman had just reached this decision in regard to Dick, when a Greek sailor called Asso approached, and asked for more bath-brick.
The officer went to see how his watch were getting on with their job of cleaning the paint-work on the deck-houses, and found that buckets of water, swabs, and bath-bricks, were being used to such purpose that the white paint was rapidly assuming the appearance of new-fallen snow. Then there was a section of wire cable to be spliced, and other work to be seen to. Thus the afternoon passed, and Dick’s talk about the signals was banished from the second mate’s mind by the various duties of the hour.