Tommy heard him, but his impulse was to wait till I had finished my sentence. This momentary delay so enraged the first mate, that he flew at the poor little fellow, knocked him down with his fist, and then began to kick him along the deck as if he had been a foot-ball.
“Coward! brute!” I exclaimed, gasping for breath; and losing all command of myself, I rushed in before Tommy. “Let alone the child—you’ll kill him if you continue to treat him thus; if you do I will brand you as a murderer. Help! help! he is killing the boy.”
My cries were heard throughout the ship. The first mate, as was to be expected, turned his fury upon me.
“Mutiny! mutiny!” he exclaimed, lifting up his fist to strike me.
He would have felled me to the deck, and I should have received the same treatment from which I had attempted to save Tommy Bigg, when his arm was seized by Mr Henley, who had at that instant sprung on deck.
“What are you about, Grimes?” he exclaimed; “this behaviour is unworthy of an officer. He is no mutineer. Anybody with feeling would have attempted to save that poor boy from your cruelty.”
“I didn’t doubt that you would have shoved in your officious interference at every opportunity,” growled out the first mate, turning fiercely on Mr Henley; “you’ll find, however, before long, that you have interfered once too often, and that you have caught a Tartar.”
“I am doing my duty as much towards you as towards others,” said Mr Henley calmly. “I entreat you, for your own sake as well as theirs, do not again strike the boys. You cannot tell what the consequences may be. We have had an example already on board this ship what men may be driven to do.”
Mr Grimes turned pale on hearing these words, partly from suppressed rage and partly from fear, I suspect, and giving a threatening look at me and Mr Henley, walked aft. I felt sure that I had made the first mate my most bitter enemy, but I could not regret what I had done. Probably, had not Mr Henley interfered at the moment he did, he would have declared me a mutineer, and had me put into irons.
We had unusually light winds, though fair, and nothing could be more pleasant than the weather; but there was every appearance of the passage being a long one.