Ralph Granger's Fortunes Part 19

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 pa.s.sion 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.

"I think the lad is sick, sir," said Duff, who happened to be near.

"See--by heavens!--he has fainted."

"The kid is shamming," growled the first mate, whose watch it now was.

"A dose of the paddle would bring him to, I'll warrant."

"I think you are right, Rucker," said Gary without paying any heed to the second mate. "Lay for'ard there two of you and lash him to the topmast shrouds. He shall have his hour up there, dead or alive, then we'll settle his shamming."

Two sailors, seizing some loose line, ran up the foremast to where Ralph had sunk back in a swoon, overcome by the combined effects of illness and the terrors of his position.

Lifting him to his feet, they bound him to the topmast ratlines so that his feet rested on the little platform. As they came down one said to the other:

"He ain't shamming. The lad is sick enough for a doctor, that's what 'e is, mate."

"Shet up," quoth his companion. "Let the captain hear you and he'll put you on bread and water for three days, if no worse comes. Every tub stands on its own bottom in this craft."

Meanwhile Neb had served breakfast in the cabin. Gary and Rucker went down, Duff taking the first mate's place.

This was the second mate's first voyage with Captain Gary, and he furtively sympathized with Ralph, but such is the force of discipline on shipboard that he dared not show his feelings openly.

"It's a burning shame," thought he, "to punish a land lubber of a boy the first day he ever spent at sea. Sugar wouldn't melt in Gary's mouth when I went to him for a job, but now the tune is changed. And to cap all, n.o.body seems to know where we're bound, unless it may be Rucker. The crew know nothing, except that we're provisioned for a long voyage, with a lot of stuff locked up in the hold as no one has seen yet."

He glanced up at the helpless boy, then shook his head.

"Hut tut! Are you sick of this cruise already, Jacob Duff? This will never do. You're in for it, so make the most of your luck, even if it turns out you do have a fiend for a skipper."

When Gary and his first officer returned, Duff went below. But as he ate, his thoughts reverted so persistently to Ralph's predicament that he grew impatient with himself. After finishing his meal he lay down in his berth and tried to sleep. Some time had elapsed when he was aroused by a sound of furious objurgation on deck.

He rose, took his cap and crept up the companionway. Captain Gary was standing by the weather rail of the quarter deck, where with clenched hands and violent gestures, he was pouring forth a flood of profane vituperation such as Duff had seldom heard equaled.

Before him was Ralph, still so weak as to require the support which Long Tom was roughly giving him, yet gazing on his infuriated commander with a steady unflinching scorn.

"Tell me you won't, eh?" stormed the captain, his feminine air and aspect completely lost in a mien of scowling ferocity. "By the living--but what's the use of swearing! Down with him to the sweat box, and if that don't tame him we'll try the paddle afterward.

"Captain Gary," interrupted Ralph undauntedly, "if I had known you yesterday as I know you now, I'd have seen you dead before I'd a been here today. I'm weak, I know; you may tie and starve me, but if you ever have me beaten--make it a good job."

Gary seemed momentarily paralyzed at such independence, then out of sheer amazement hissed forth sneeringly:

"Will your impudence tell me why?"

"Because I'll kill you!" exclaimed Ralph, with such concentrated energy of tone and accent, that Duff trembled inwardly for the boy's safety.

"I know I'm in your power now, but I'd do it ten years from now if I had to wait so long. I never knew a mountain man to take a beating yet, without he got even--never!"

Such unheard of insolence appeared to deprive Gary of words wherewith to do the situation justice.

"You know what I want!" he roared at Bludson, as he left the deck.

"See that it is done!"

The boatswain at once collared Ralph and took him forward, where both disappeared in the forecastle.

While this scene was being enacted, Rucker leaned against the stern rail idly picking his teeth, as his dull, hard eye glanced alternately from the vessel's course to the parties most concerned.

"What in heaven's name is it all about?" asked Duff, when the two men were alone but for the man at the wheel, who appeared to give no heed.

"What has the boy done?"

"He's too independent," replied the first mate. "He can't do nothing; he couldn't even climb the fo'mast or walk the deck in a breeze. Such green uns has no business bein' independent aboard ship. If I was captain I'd a had him triced up to the mast and the paddle a going afore now."

"The lad never saw a ship till yesterday. Isn't it a little rough to expect him to find his sea legs in half an hour? He was seasick to boot."

"Sea--thunder! You never sailed with Captain Gary afore, did you?"

Rucker regarded his junior with a peculiar smile. "I thought not.

Well--I have. I'll give you a pointer. He'd rather send this ship to the bottom any time than stand any nonsense. That's him; and I'm sort o' built that way myself."

Duff made no response, and soon returned to his stateroom, where he remained until his own watch was called. He was a good sailor and a nervy sort of a man, but there was something so peculiarly devilish in the contrast presented by Gary's slight, feminine person and his abnormal exhibition of rage that the second mate began to doubt whether he had done wisely in shipping with an unknown captain on an unknown voyage for the sake of mere high wages.

He finally fell asleep until wakened by the sound of two bells being struck, followed by the hoa.r.s.e cry of:

"Starb'd watch on deck, ahoy!"

CHAPTER XIV.

Bad Weather.

When the second mate reached the deck the wind had freshened still more. In the southwest a low lying bank of slate colored cloud was slowly diffusing itself over that quarter of the heavens.

Under its lower edge, was a coppery hued, wind streaked border, that glistened in a dull way.

"The barometer is falling," remarked Rucker as he prepared to go below.

"We're going to have a nasty spell, I guess. You might take a double reef in that jib if it gets worse. If there's any shortnin' of sail beyond that, call the captain."

In his walk to and fro the second mate's thoughts reverted to Ralph occasionally and he took pains later on, to ask Neb if the boy had had anything to eat.

"Nuttin' but braid an' water, suh. Capn's orders."