“You’ll be wanting a new steward on the ship, Spooney,” he laughed, “for I’ve accepted a steady situation on shore. I hope you’ll lend your Bible to the next man; I found it awfully comforting. But I guess I’ll not mail that letter to-night to my dear old papa; the old chap was hanged about thirty years ago. I kept your blooming cabin in good shape, anyhow, for a man with a hundred and forty thousand dollars in his satchel.”
It was a relief to Kit when the officers took his former companion away. He had heard of such desperate criminals, but had never been face to face with one before. He had an hour yet before the boat would come, and spent the time walking the streets, feeling sick at heart and a little out of patience with himself.
“I don’t wonder he called me ‘Spooney,’” he reflected. “I ought to have been smart enough to see through the man at once, as I think the Captain did, to some extent. How easily he might have got me into a heap of trouble if it had been worth his while! Even a poor boy with nothing to be robbed of, has to be careful whom he associates with. So remember that in the future, Mr. Kit Silburn!”
The Captain’s only remark, when he returned to the ship and told what had happened, put Kit in a little better spirits.
“So that leaves us without a cabin steward,” the Captain said, “in a small port where we can’t get another. I wish I could cut you right straight in two, Christopher, for I want you in two places at once. As soon as we have the cargo out you must act as steward till we get back to New York; but for the present I must have you on shore.”
“I think I can manage with the steward’s work, sir,” Kit answered; “and the cargo ought to be out in two or three days now.”
“And till then the engineers’ boy must look after the cabin too,” the Captain added.
That night Kit had many things to think of as he lay in his berth. Everybody feels a little sheepish to be so thoroughly deceived, and he was no exception. But there were more important things to consider than that. It was only a wretched burglar who had called him a spooney, and his employer liked him well enough to want him in two places at once. Kit was a good fellow, but he was human, like the rest of us, and that remark of the Captain’s made him feel pretty well satisfied with himself. And here was the steward’s place vacant. If he did good work there for a week or two, he could get the place permanently, he felt almost sure of that. But did he want it? He was not quite sure about that. On the one hand it would bring him better pay, and on the other hand if he became a steward he probably would never get any higher. And after all, maybe the Captain would think him too young; and a dozen more ifs and ands, and in the midst of it all he fell asleep.
For the next week he was the busiest boy in the Bahama Islands. As far as possible he set things right for the day in the cabin before he went ashore, then stood all day in the sun, checking off cargo, and was back to the ship again in time to attend to supper. In the evening he washed the dishes and cleaned up the pantry, and turned in early because he had to turn out early. In those days it was only by good management that he could get ten minutes of his own to write a short letter home.
“Well, you are a softy!” Chock Cheevers said to him one morning in the cabin—for it was Chock who had to wait on the Captain in Kit’s absence. “Here you’re doing the steward’s work, and the cabin boy’s, and the supercargo’s, all for six dollars a month. I’d strike for double pay, anyhow, if I was you. I’m going to strike, myself, pretty soon if this double work keeps on.”