a convincing impression and commanded respect; but the situation was unfavourable. His very respectable garments, in their tumbled and tom disarrangement, his legs unsteady, from recent experiences and from weakness, his face pale with the evidence of approaching sea-sickness, all conspired to defeat his attempt at dignity. Yet he was determined.
“Captain,” he said, stepping close to the stolid figure by the wheel, “you have made a bad mistake in getting me aboard here. I was drugged and shipped without my knowing it. I am a travelling man, and connected with a big business house in Boston. If you don’t set me ashore at once, you’ll get yourself into more kinds of trouble than you ever dreamed of. I’m a man-of-the-world, and I can let this pass for a good joke among the boys on the road, if it stops right here. But if you carry it any farther, I warn you it will be at your peril. It’s a serious thing, this man-stealing.”
Captain Hamilton Haley, fortifying himself with a piece of tobacco, eyed Mr. Thomas Edwards sullenly. Then he clenched a huge fist and replied.
“I’ve seen ’em like you before,” he said. “They was all real gentlemen, same as you be, when they come aboard, and most of ’em owned up to bein’ pickpockets and tramps when they and I got acquainted. I guess you’re no great gentleman. When a man goes and signs a contract with me, I makes him live up to it. You’ve gone and signed with me, and now you get for’ard and bear a hand at that winch.”
“That’s an outrageous lie!” cried Tom Edwards, shaking his fist in turn at Captain Haley. “I never signed a paper in my life, to ship with you or anybody else. If they’ve got my signature, it’s forged.”
“Look here, you,” answered Haley, advancing a step, “don’t you go an’ tell me as how I lie, young feller. Ain’t I seen the contract with my own eyes? Didn’t Scroop show it, along with the contract of that other young chap there? Don’t you go telling me I ain’t doin’ things legal like. I’ll show you some Chesapeake Bay law.”
“Well, Chesapeake Bay law is the same as the law for the rest of Maryland, I reckon,” exclaimed Tom Edwards hotly. “You’ve got no law on your side. I’ve got the law with me, and I’ll proceed against you. You’ll find Chesapeake Bay law and State law is much the same when you get into court.”
For a moment something like a grin overspread the dull features of Captain Hamilton Haley. Then he raised his arm, advanced another step forward, and shook his fist in the other’s face.
“I reckon you ain’t had no experience with Chesapeake Bay law,” he cried angrily. “But it’s easy to larn, and it don’t take no books to teach it. Do you see that fist?”
He brandished his huge, red bunch of knuckles in Tom Edwards’s face.
“Do you see that fist?” he cried again, his own face growing more fiery. “That’s the law of the Bay. That’s the law of the dredging fleet. There ain’t no other. Any man that goes against that law, gets it laid down to him good and hard. There it is, and you gets your first lesson.”
With a single blow of his arm, planting the aforesaid digest and epitome of dredging law full in the face of Tom Edwards, he stretched him sprawling on the deck, dazed and terrified.
Captain Hamilton Haley, having thus successfully demonstrated the might and majesty of dredging-fleet law, according to his own interpretation of its terms, proceeded now to expound it further. His anger had increased with his act of violence, and the veins in his neck and on his forehead stood out, swollen.
“See here you, young fellow,” he cried, advancing toward Harvey, threateningly, “don’t you go starting out uppish, too. Don’t you begin sea-lawyerin’ with me. I know the law. There it is, and I hand it out when needed. There ain’t no other law among the dredgers that I knows of, from Plum Point down to the Rappahannock. Some of ’em larns it quick, and some of ’em larns it slow; and them as larns it quickest gets it lightest. Now what have you got to say?”
Jack Harvey, thus hopelessly confronted, thought – and thought quickly.
“I signed for a cruise, all right,” he replied, returning the infuriated captain’s gaze steadily, “and I’m ready to go to work.”
“Then you get for’ard, lively now, and grab hold of that winch. You loafers get back and yank that anchor up. This ain’t a town meetin’. Get them men to work again, mate. Take him along, too.”
The captain pointed, in turn, to Harvey, to the sailors who had edged their way aft, to watch proceedings, and to the unfortunate Mr. Edwards, who had arisen from the deck and stood, a sorry, woe-begone object, unable physically to offer further resistance.
“Shake things up now, Jim Adams, shake ’em up,” urged Haley. “Here we are losing good wind over a lot of tramps that costs ten dollars apiece to get here, and little good after we’ve got ’em. How’s a man goin’ to make his livin’ dredging, when he pays high for men an’ gets nothin’ to show for his money? I’d like to get that fellow, Jenkins, out here once, himself. I’d show him this isn’t a business for school-boys and counter-jumpers. I’d get ten dollars’ worth of work out of him, and a good many more ten dollars’ worth that he’s got out of me, or he’d know the reason why.”
Thus relieving his mind of his own troubles, Captain Hamilton Haley, in a state of highly virtuous indignation, watched with approval the actions of the mate. The latter, seizing Tom Edwards, hurried him forward unceremoniously and bade him take hold at the handle of the winch and help raise the anchor. Tom Edwards weakly grasped the handle, as directed, in company with one of the sailors. Jack Harvey and the other seaman worked at the opposite handle.
Two men could have done the job easily, and the four made quick work of it. By the time the anchor chain was hove short, the mate and Haley had got the main-sail up. One of the seamen left the windlass and set one of the jibs; the anchor was brought aboard and stowed. The bug-eye, Brandt, began to swing off from its mooring, as the wind caught the jib, which was held up to windward. Easily the craft spun ’round, going before the wind out of the harbour and running across the bay, headed for the Eastern shore.
CHAPTER VI
THE WORKING OF THE LAW
“Shake out the reefs and get the foresail on her,” called Haley. “Lively, now, we’ve lost time.”
The mate repeated the order; the two available seamen began untying the reef-points, which had been knotted when sail had been shortened in the breeze of the previous day. It was simple enough work, merely the loosening and untying of a series of square knots. Harvey had done the like a hundred times aboard his own sloop. He hastened to assist, and did his part as quickly as the other two. Jim Adams, somewhat surprised, eyed him curiously.
“You’re a right smart youngster, ain’t you?” he said, patronizingly. “Reckon you’ll be so mightily pleased you’ll come again some time.”
There was something so insolent in the tone, so sheer and apparent an exulting in his power to compel the youth to do his bidding, that the blood mounted in Harvey’s cheeks, and he felt his pulses beat quicker. But he went on soberly with his work, and the mate said no more.
Ignorant of all things aboard a vessel, and too weak to work if he had been skilled at it, Tom Edwards stood helplessly by. The humiliation of his repulse at the hands of the captain, and his dismay at the dismal prospect, overwhelmed him. He gazed at the receding shore, and groaned.
The foresail was run up, and with that and the mainsail winged out on opposite sides, the bug-eye ran before the wind at an easy clip. She responded at once to the increased spread
