Dick pointed to the accusing lantern, and said in a frightened tone: “Yes, sir. I—I remember now I forgot to bring up the lantern when—when I fetched the rope.”
This was a lie. He had turned the wick low and then left it in the lazarette purposely, knowing well that no one would enter the place after the day’s work was done. But for the accidental circumstance of its having been placed too near one of the deadlights, the presence of the lantern would never have been suspected.
“Do you know what I ought to do with you?”
The captain’s tones were so stern that Dick was hardly able to articulate “No, sir.”
“I ought to take a rope’s end and beat you within an inch of your life. That’s what any captain would have done twenty years ago, and what some would do now. You left this light down there among bales of oakum, sennit, old sails, rockets, signal-lights, and other inflammable stuff, and if there had been enough sea running to heel the bark over a trifle more, the lantern would have upset, setting the whole place on fire—and we out in the South Atlantic, a good week’s sail from the nearest port!”
The captain’s passion mastered him, and he shook Dick until the boy’s teeth chattered. Suddenly releasing him, he turned to Mrs. Evans and her niece.
“I ought to apologize, ladies, for this outburst; but I lost one ship by fire years ago, and this boy has tried me beyond endurance.”
“I do not blame you in the least, captain,” said the alarmed widow; “I feel sure my husband would have inflicted a severe punishment for such an offense. It is as bad as Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot.”
“You see, madam, we officers have to put up with a good deal from sailors now-a-days,” said Captain Maxwell, sarcastically. “If I punished that boy as he deserved, he would have me arrested the moment we reached port. Then, aided by some unscrupulous lawyer and the testimony of various members of the crew, I should be convicted of ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’ and fined heavily, or imprisoned. The evidence of yourself and niece might clear me in this case, but all the papers would print articles about the barbarity of captains and mates in general, and the lot of the poor, abused merchant-sailor,—forgetting to mention the fact that a vessel, her cargo, and all hands, had narrowly escaped a terrible disaster at the hands of one of these persecuted saints!
“Dick, you were warned a week ago that if you entered the lazarette again without permission you would be put in irons. But it seems you had permission,” with a glance at the mate,—“and so we shall have to let you off easier. Go up on the fore royal yard and sit there until the watch ends at midnight.”