Captain Scott took the lantern and again placed it within the bucket.
“I reckon I can navigate,” Stump said to himself. High hopes came into his mind, and if Captain Scott could have read them he would not have been so sure of winning back Stump’s friendship. The mate’s thoughts had at first been upon Suva, and his desire to go back and square himself with the people before whom Captain Scott had humiliated him. Especially, Stump had wanted to tell the young girl who had tried to make him a better man that she had done him some good. Once the captain of the “Talofa,” he could try to be a better man. That in accepting such a position in command of a vessel owned by Captain Scott, he would be unable to cast off his old life, did not occur to him. In fact Stump did not consider as crimes the many acts they had committed, and were committing. To Stump a thing was a crime only when the perpetrator was caught in the act and put in jail. Stump knew that he owed his immunity to Captain Scott. Once in Suva without the captain, Stump thought he could square himself with the girl, and incidentally get even with Captain Scott.
As he took the lantern from Stump, Scott held it up for an instant and observed his mate’s face. What he saw there did not seem to worry him. “I guess that offer will keep his tongue quiet,” he mused. “With an American war-ship in port, Stump’s apt to meet some friends ashore and say too much.”
“Hold her on this course, Mr. Stump,” the captain said officially. “I’m going to turn in for forty winks. You can call me at ten o’clock, and then get the crew all up on deck.” Stump grunted and leaned over to look at the compass. He saw the lubber’s point was on the course the captain had figured out from the chart. Captain Scott descended the ladder to the cabin.
Stump suddenly took up the lantern and placed it on the covered chart table. With the dividers he measured off a distance on the black line the captain had drawn and then with the rulers he took off a course to another point on the island.
“South by east,” he exclaimed in an undertone. “Twelve miles to Ukula harbor. We could do it in two hours at this speed.” He glanced aloft. The canvas was drawing well, the booms lying about three points on the lee quarter. The wind was at east northeast. The ship was heading southeast, and therefore about two points “free.” South by east would bring the wind one point abaft the weather beam.
Stump, after satisfying himself of the feasibility of his suddenly conceived plan, proceeded to put it into execution. Picking his way across the sleeping forms on the deck, he made his way forward to the galley, where the blacksmith’s forge was lashed. That day he had been at work making a weld of wrought steel to replace a spreader for the topmast backstays. With this bar of steel in his hands, he glanced into the galley. It was empty, but the coffee kettle, still hot, was on the stove. As he poured himself a cup, he ran over in his mind the risk he was taking. His timid soul quailed. Had he the courage to carry through this bold plan of revenge? In the harbor of Ukula Captain Scott had said was a Yankee man-of-war. To bring the notorious “Bully” Scott into the arms of the law, red handed, with black boys and guns for the natives, would be a stroke of diplomacy which would bring fame to the name of Benjamin Stump throughout all the South Sea Islands. A better reward than the command of the “Talofa”! Once Scott was behind the jail bars, convicted of a felony, all his black career would be told by those who would no longer fear to tell the truth. The girl in Suva would hear of it, and would believe her advice had influenced him to bring to justice this sheep in wolf’s clothing, the bold schemer who made others do his evil work.
“Thinks I ain’t on to navigation,” he chuckled. “Wasn’t in an iron war-ship for nothing and helped the navigator to make magnets out of steel bars to fix his compass.
“I don’t owe him anything,” he added, when his conscience troubled him as he remembered how Captain Scott had paid his fine at Shanghai. “He’s gotten his money’s worth out of me, long ago. The score’s on my side now. I’d rather go to jail anyway than to sail with him longer. I swore I’d kill him when I got a chance after he broke my arm with that belaying-pin. He can’t prove nothing against me; that Solomon Islander was accidentally drowned, and the other things he knows of—— Well, I’m sick of being treated like a dog, and that’s the end of it.”
The warm coffee revived his waning courage, and determinedly he started aft to the wheel. He laid his steel bar against the rail and took his stand behind the helmsman.