“Everything is not ready,” Haines replied. “We have to give the crew a few hours to sober up in, for one thing; they are not fit for duty now. It’s an outrageous shame the way the sailors are brought on board drunk; but that’s always the way, so I suppose there’s no use worrying about it. Then we can’t go till the charterers of the ship tell us to; the minute they say go, we’re off. You may as well turn in, young ’un, for you’ll not see her fairly under way much before noon to-morrow.”
Kit went down to the cabin and did such odd jobs as he could find, for he knew it was useless for him to try to sleep when the ship was about to move. When everything was straightened up, he sat down by the big table under the lamp and took out the little book in which his mother had written his name.
“I wish they’d had steamships in these Bible times,” he said to himself; “I’d like to see what they had to say about them. There’s a good deal here about ships, but they were all such little ones; and I don’t see anything about cabin boys; maybe they didn’t have any cabins.”
He had not been reading long before the blowing of the big whistle and the noise on deck told him that the ship was about to move, and he hurried out. But that first little stage of the journey was a disappointment. She merely crawled over to the Statue of Liberty and dropped her anchor, and there was nothing to be seen but the great blazing torch over the statue, and the twinkling lights on shore.
It was hardly daylight in the morning when Kit felt himself roughly shaken, and heard the voice of the steward saying:—
“Come, hustle out here, boy. We’re away from the wharf now, and you’ve got to stir yourself. Don’t lie there and say ‘yes, sir,’ but jump. I’ll have no lazy boys about my cabin.”
Kit sprang up and dressed as fast as he could, but nothing he did satisfied the steward, who ordered him here and there apparently for the sake of showing his authority, scolded him, and once took him by the shoulders and shook him.
“I’d rather hate to sail with the steward for captain!” Kit said to himself, laughing inwardly at the little man’s feeble attempt at violence. He did not even know the man’s name, for he was always addressed as “steward”; but he was a middle-aged, dried-up little fellow, his yellowish face marked from small-pox, and his body so thin that his coat always hung like a bag. He spoke with a strong foreign accent, and Kit had noticed already that the Captain did not seem to like to have him about him; but he was a capital steward, and understood his business from top to bottom.
“I ought to have brought a note-book along to keep a list of the things I learn,” Kit said to himself after several hours of this nagging; “I’ve learned a fresh thing this morning, anyhow—not to make a show of myself by giving unnecessary orders if I’m ever put in any little position of authority.”
How differently the Captain managed things! About ten o’clock a little tug came alongside, and the Captain and the pilot climbed aboard.