Two sailors sprang forward with bucket and mop. The captain turned to Ralph, who could now trace little resemblance in his superior's face and mien to the bland, almost fatherly man who had welcomed him at the Marshall House.
"My lad," said Gary, and his voice grated harshly on the ear, "I don't think the deck agrees with you. Suppose you try the fo'mast head for an hour. Come! Up you go!"
In his bewilderment Ralph attempted to mount the mainmast ratlines in a lumbering way.
"Start him up, Long Tom," roared the captain. "The fool don't even know where the fo'mast is."
Bludson again seized Ralph by the collar, propelled him the length of the deck and gave him a long boost up the forward ratlines.
Faint from sickness, shivering in his wet clothes, dizzy with the peril of his position, yet with a rising passion in his heart, the boy began to ascend. With a shifting foundation under his feet, a stiff wind flattening him against the shrouds, and a deathly swaying to and fro that increased as he went higher, he managed to reach the foretop. Crawling through the lubber hole he rested and held on.
"Up with you!" shouted the captain, but Ralph gave no heed.
He was weak, faint and dizzy. The heaving plain below made his head swin [Transcriber's note: swim?]. The schooner's deck looked fearfully small.
Casting his eye upward, he saw a narrowing ladder of rope shooting to a mere dot of a resting place twenty feet above him. It did not look as if a monkey could have held on there.
"Why in the —— don't you go on!" roared Gary, who was now pale with contained fury.