Owen felt very grateful to the captain and his kind friend the second lieutenant. He did not hesitate for a moment about acting as the captain’s clerk while he remained on board, but he asked himself the question whether it was not his duty, should he find the opportunity, to return to Mr Fluke’s counting-house, from which he had not been formally dismissed. He had come only for a holiday to regain his health, and he considered that he was bound to go back again. He found, however, that, having once entered, he could not leave the ship without the captain’s leave until she returned home and was paid off. There was now no help for it. Captain Stanhope was evidently a kind man, and would, should a favourable opportunity occur, allow him to go home. Still, Owen saw that the present was no time to talk about that. He at once set to work on his new duties, and he soon found, from the approval expressed by the captain, that he performed them satisfactorily.
Mr Scoones, who had not left the ship, wishing to go round in her to Batavia, looked very much astonished when he saw Owen in an officer’s dress on the quarter-deck. He had himself, however, so completely lost credit with the officers from his conduct in the action that few of them spoke to him. He was glad therefore for some one to speak to. Going up to Owen, he addressed him with a patronising air—
“Glad to see that your talents have been discovered, my young friend,” he said; “had I felt justified, I should have recommended you to the captain from the first, but as you thought fit to associate with the ship’s boys and men, I could not do so with any propriety.”
“I do not know with whom else I could have associated, Mr Scoones,” answered Owen, laughing. “You certainly showed no inclination for my society, and unhappily all the other officers were lost. Had it not been for the ship’s boy you speak of, and the only man who remained sober, we none of us should have escaped.”
“Well, well,” answered Mr Scoones, “let bygones be bygones. If I get home first I will report your good fortune—that you are as strong and hearty as your friends could wish you to be. You will not, I suppose, send home an account of the shipwreck, for you and I may differ in our statements. Mine of course is the one which will be accredited, as no one at home will fancy that you can know anything about the matter.”
“I should not wish to say anything to incriminate you,” answered Owen; “but the lives of a great number of our fellow-creatures are at stake when an officer loses his senses, and I therefore hope that you will either give up drinking or quit the sea.”
“Then you intend to accuse me of casting away the ship through drunkenness?” exclaimed Mr Scoones, looking as though he could eat Owen up.
“Whatever I say or do will be from a sense of duty,” answered Owen.
A part of this conversation had been overheard by the first lieutenant, who held Mr Scoones in most supreme contempt, fully believing, from what he knew of him, that it was through his drunkenness that the ship had been lost.
“Mr Scoones,” he said, addressing that person, “it has been decided that you should go on shore at once. If you are in a hurry to reach Batavia, you can, without difficulty, find your way overland.”