“Then you are that young officer who brought the abandoned craft over the reef at flood tide, and sailed her safely into the harbor?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know, young man, such a thing has only been done once before, and that was ten years ago? Why, the whole town is talking about it!”
“No, sir, I didn’t know it,” I declared. “There was nothing about the feat for them to be amazed over. Anyone left on the brig would have done just as I did.”
He shook his head in dissent, and then continued:
“Tell me how you had offended your Captain so as to lead him to so far forget his conduct as an officer as to desert you in a time of danger.”
I told him briefly the reason for Captain Weston’s wrath.
“I won’t attempt to justify you here for disobeying the command of a superior officer, even if he was clearly in the wrong. Sometimes it is not a safe thing to do. Of two evils you must choose the least, letting another be responsible for his own mistake,” he remarked with a smile, when I was done. “But I now understand what you meant yesterday morning by protesting you had not come over to the ship with any intention of enlisting. The whole thing was a dastardly trick on the part of your captain which he played partly that he might gratify his feeling of resentment towards you, but more because he dare not face his owners with the report that you had saved a vessel which he had himself abandoned. With you out of the way he can make any report he pleases.”
This was a new view of the matter to me, but I could readily see now it might have been the chief cause of Captain Weston’s action, so I nodded my head in token of the fact that I accepted his explanation. Then the commander continued:
“It must have seemed hard to you to be thrust in an instant out of the cabin into the forecastle.”