CHAPTER VIII.

A Very Real Danger.

Meanwhile the "St. George" under full sail and well over on her side was running before a strong west wind. The waves washed over the deck; the sea was so rough that it was hard for an experienced seaman to make his way, and only those sure of foot and hand dared venture on the rigging. Nevertheless Redfox ordered w.i.l.l.y to climb the mainmast with him to help unfurl the sail at the very top.

"If you want to be a good seaman like your father you must learn to climb the rigging not only in a light breeze like this but also in a hurricane. You want to get so that you can run around up there like a squirrel in a Christmas tree. There is no danger; just hold tight to the rigging with one hand and don't get frightened when the boat pitches. You can't learn to do any climbing that's worth while standing around here on deck. Up, my little man, let's see if you have any nerve."

"Yes, I have nerve, and lots of times in pleasant weather I've been up the mast, but when the ship rocks as it does now, my father would never let me think of going up," answered w.i.l.l.y.

"And he had good reason, too," put in the helmsman, who was standing near Redfox and had heard all the conversation.

"I never heard of such a thing as asking the cabin-boy to climb the rigging when the sea is rough, and before he has had a chance to prove himself a good climber in pleasant weather. Master w.i.l.l.y, don't obey any such foolhardy order. The Captain, I am sure, does not want you to try any such thing."

"Oho, helmsman, you dare to order this boy to be insubordinate, do you?

I'll have you put in irons for your impudence," cried Redfox, giving him a wicked look.

"Green, don't be frightened. I can climb much better than you think, and then besides my guardian angel will watch over me and keep me from falling. I am sure I won't come down any more of a corpse than I did from the dome of the cathedral. I must obey this man. Let me go. You just see my guardian angel will take care of me."

"Mr. Redfox, I tell you plainly it's a foolhardy game you are playing with that boy," said the helmsman earnestly. "If anything happens to him you'll answer for it on a charge of criminal carelessness at the first port we put into."

"Wait till you get a chance," growled the officer to Green; to w.i.l.l.y he said, "Go on up."

w.i.l.l.y crossed himself, then swung himself without fear up on the rope ladder leading from the side of the vessel to the crow's nest. Right after him followed Redfox. With anger and fear Green watched how the wind blew w.i.l.l.y's blonde hair and the officer's red beard; for a moment the two disappeared behind the sails, then they appeared scaling the topmost ladder. The wind had increased; the vessel tipped still more to the side. w.i.l.l.y clambered on courageously higher and higher up, but the real danger was yet to come.

"Now see, he is astride the yard sliding out fully twelve feet from the main mast--now he is loosening the rope by which the top-sail is fastened to the arm! Redfox ought to do that himself," said the helmsman to himself. "But no, he forces the boy before him out on the yard, orders him to stand up and unfasten the rope. The inhuman wretch!--That means the boy's death. It is no easy task even for an experienced seaman. And he is not even holding him by the belt, only by the bottom part of his jacket.----Now he is holding him tighter.

There----O holy Mother of G.o.d the boy is falling!" Green closed his eyes for a moment and gasped. "No, he is sliding along the yard. Hold fast, w.i.l.l.y, hold fast for two or three minutes. I'll come to help you."

He threw the rope over the wheel and ran like a cat up the rigging.

w.i.l.l.y, in utmost danger of falling, was sliding and swinging along between the sails of the fore and mainmast, every moment expecting that his strength would give out and that he would fall on the planks of the deck below or into the sea.

"Holy guardian angel," he cried, "take me; I cannot hold on any longer!" Everything swam before his eyes, and in a moment he would have fallen, if the helmsman had not, almost miraculously reached him and seized him in his arms. He carried him down to the deck and laid him in a dead faint on a pile of rope, and began working over him.

Before Redfox came down from the rigging w.i.l.l.y had recovered. "You see," he said to Green, "my holy guardian angel did not leave me."

"Indeed, Master w.i.l.l.y, you speak the truth, for without the help of your guardian angel I should not have been able to save you," affirmed Green, wiping drops of cold sweat from his forehead. Then he thundered at Redfox:

"Thank G.o.d, that you lay yourself down to rest tonight without a murder on your conscience. It is no fault of yours that that boy came down from the rigging alive."

"I forbid any such talk," answered Redfox without meeting the gaze of the helmsman. "The stupid youngster got dizzy when I let go of his jacket and started to get a better hold of his belt."

"No, no, Mr. Redfox," answered w.i.l.l.y firmly, "you pushed me instead of getting hold of my bolt. I did not get dizzy."

"Ridiculous! Your fear put that notion into your head. Now if you go to telling that story round here--even once--I'll have the Captain shut you up in the steerage with the Chinamen. You go to telling the wrongs you suffer from your superior officer and you'll get yourself into trouble. No more of this."

Redfox went to the Captain's cabin. Indignantly the helmsman looked after him, and then he again asked the boy if he was very sure that Redfox had pushed him.

"Quite sure," he replied, "and he looked at me more wickedly than I thought any man could look. What has he against me? I have never done him any harm. And my uncle, too, acts so strangely, he has never once given me a pleasant word or look."

"I understand well enough," answered the helmsman. "Be on your guard with Redbeard and your uncle; I don't dare to tell you any more. I'd like to open your eyes, but I can't. Trust in G.o.d and your holy guardian angel who saved you almost miraculously today. In the first port that we put into Redbeard will answer for what he did today--and for a few other things, too."

To the Captain Redfox reported, "I did not think it possible for that boy to come down from the rigging alive, and now he is telling that I tried to push him off the yard, and, of course, that numbskull of a Green is only to ready to believe him. That fellow has got wind of some things, too. We must see to it that he gets no chance to tell what he knows or thinks he knows."

"You are my bad angel, Redfox, and want to drag me deeper and deeper into crime," said the Captain. "Haven't I told you again and again that I will not have that boy put out of the way?"

"Oh, you are always for half-way measures. I take no account of them in my reckonings. It would have been very fine for you, if--accidentally--he had fallen from the rigging," growled Redfox.

"No, no, I won't have any bloodshed," said the Captain most earnestly.

"There are enough things now for which I have to answer,--and there will be more when we wreck the 'St. George' on one of the many reefs off the east coast of Australia, as we have planned to do. Now, if against my will, you do anything to that boy, I'll have you turned over to the authorities, even if I run the danger of being arrested as your accomplice. You may know what to expect."

With these words the Captain left Redfox standing at the door of the cabin. He muttered to himself, "Well, do you know, I really believe his conscience is troubling him--the mushhead! I must deal with him more firmly.--No, no, Captain, after what happened this morning the only thing to do is to get him out of the way,--and the helmsman along with him. I'll tend to that. Ha, ha! Mr. Captain, you'll get up in the morning early to turn Redfox over to the authorities!"

CHAPTER IX.

A New Plan.

Weeks had pa.s.sed since the happenings told of in the previous chapter took place, and nothing of any importance had occurred. Redfox had not again ordered w.i.l.l.y to climb the mast with him, and even when the ship was becalmed and lay with slackened sails on a sea smooth and clear as a looking-gla.s.s, he would not allow him to go up to the crow's nest.

"Oh, no, no, if you were to get dizzy and fall, you'd tell that I pushed you," he sneered at every possible opportunity. Green he avoided as much as possible.

"The boy was perhaps mistaken, and my suspicions of the Captain and Redfox may be wholly unfounded," thought honest Green, when week after week went by without their taking revenge on either him or w.i.l.l.y. The voyage had been an extraordinarily quick and fortunate one. The days which ships usually spend in being becalmed under the Equator the 'St.

George' spent under full sail with favoring winds. Everything on shipboard was going very well, yet the Captain was always sullen and morose. He and Redfox sat in the cabin and gambled and drank most of their time. Rarely did they finish one debauch before they began on another. Redfox seemed to exercise hypnotic power over the Captain.

w.i.l.l.y, the darling of the crew, at first was much grieved over his uncle's behavior and the aversion which the first officer showed for him, but he soon became accustomed to their ways. The companionship of Green, who initiated him into the mysteries of the compa.s.s and the practical work of steering the ship, was pleasant, and he had Peppo.

The Captain had allowed the boatswain to put up another hammock in w.i.l.l.y's cabin, so that Peppo could sleep there instead of going down into the steerage. Together the boys said their morning and evening prayers, just as they were accustomed to do in the pension in Hongkong, and slept like nabobs in their little hammocks while the ship went ploughing its way through the placid ocean.

The "St. George" was at this time in the sea between the New Britain Archipelago, as the group of islands which now goes by the name of the Bismarck Archipelago was at that time called, and the Soloman Islands.

With full sail the boat was running before a stiff northwest breeze.

The fiery tropical sun burned in the heavens, and far as the eye could reach the waters rolled in a long swell on the deep blue southern sea.

A pair of screaming sea-gulls circled round the top of the mast, the sails flapped, the rigging creaked, and the waters swished and dashed against the sides of the vessel. Other sounds there were none. The vessel might almost have been a phantom ship upon an enchanted sea.

Green sat near the wheel in the shade of one of the sails smoking his pipe and with difficulty keeping his eyes open sufficiently to glance at the big compa.s.s and the distant horizon occasionally. "If our reckonings are right we shall sight the Soloman Islands now at any minute," he said to himself, and was about to call to the man on watch in the crow's nest to see that he was not asleep, when w.i.l.l.y came out from the cabin and motioned to Green that he had something important to tell him.

"h.e.l.lo, w.i.l.l.y, what's the matter? Any one would think from the expression on your face that you had seen 'The Klabautermann'!"

"The Klabautermann" is a spirit of the sea similar to the brownies of the mountains and the goblins which play such a part in children's stories. Ordinarily unseen this spirit helps the sailors in their work when they are good and true, but when he appears with a fiery head and green teeth, attired in riding boots, yellow hose, and pointed hat,--as the sailors a.s.sert they have seen him--then look out. Beware of misfortune. Some awful fate awaits the ship, so the superst.i.tious sailors solemnly swear.

"I have not seen 'The Klabautermann'," answered w.i.l.l.y, "and I don't believe there is any such spirit, although you are so positive about it; but I have something to tell you that will surprise you more than a visit from the Flying Dutchman's haunted ship, that you told me about."

"Well, let's have the surprise."

"Can any one play eavesdropper here?"

"No; no one at all. We are here all by ourselves aft and who is there that would want to listen to us?"

"Redbeard and my uncle, but they are in the cabin, drinking and gambling as usual. Last night, you know, Peppo had toothache all night and couldn't sleep, so this afternoon I took his place in the kitchen while he went up to have a nap in his hammock. He just came and told me that he had overheard Redbeard plotting some dreadful thing against us. Peppo couldn't understand it all, but he got this much, that at the island to which we are coming today, or at the latest tomorrow morning, he is going to send you ash.o.r.e for drinking water. He has let the water leak out of the casks. 'When Green goes ash.o.r.e,' he said, 'I haven't a doubt in the world but that the young one, who stands in your way, will want to go with him, and the little Chinaman, whom I do not trust, will also want to go--We can just send them, even if you don't hanker after this plan. And--well--if they don't come back, why the wild Soloman Islanders will know what to do with them.' Peppo heard the first officer say this."