“Oh, yes, I’m in for it now,” he thought. “This is the death chamber, sure.”
“Come up here where I can look at you,” the Captain said. He was seated in front of his desk. “I want to see whether you realize what it means for a man to go to sleep on watch. If we had been left locked in that cell, and had all starved there, who would have been responsible for it?”
“It would have been my fault, sir,” Harry answered.
“It would have been your fault,” the Captain repeated. “If a sailor goes to sleep on watch, and a collision results, and lives are lost, he is responsible for it, and the law would punish him. The man on watch often holds the lives of his comrades in his hand, and he should always feel the responsibility.”
The Captain stood up as he spoke and stepped toward Harry, but the cabin boy did not shrink. He had made up his mind to take whatever came, without flinching.
“I think you understand what a grave fault you committed,” the Captain went on, laying his hand on Harry’s shoulder, “and feel sorry for it. That is not all the punishment you deserve, but it is all you will get this time, as we were on shore and on a pleasure trip. But never let me catch you asleep on watch again. Now get out about your business.”
Harry was not the first cabin boy who had gone into Captain Griffith’s room expecting something unpleasant, and had come out feeling that he would swim through stormy seas to serve such a captain as that. Perhaps that was the reason that nearly every one of the Captain’s cabin boys had turned out well.
It was almost noon when Kit returned to the ship, feeling rather dissatisfied with the way his affairs had gone on shore.
“What’s the matter, Silburn?” the Captain asked him while they sat at dinner. “Have they been doing you up? You have to look out for them here, or they’ll get the strings right out of your shoes. This place is famous for that. They have a large population in Marseilles from Italy, Spain, Turkey, Greece, Syria, all over creation, all in a hurry to make money without caring much how it is made. They tell me that when Marseilles people buy anything in a store they very often won’t let the shopkeeper wrap it up, for fear he will change it.”
“No, sir,” Kit answered, “they haven’t been robbing me; they have had no chance. But our agents here are curious sort of people, and I am afraid they will give me as much trouble as they can. Indeed, they have given me a great deal more trouble already than there was any need of. One of the first things they said was that they would smooth the way for me to get my stuff through, and I could do the same for what they would send over to New York.”