Both ladies glanced at the mate in surprise at these words, and Captain Maxwell looked at his chief officer in a way that was anything but complimentary to the latter. The captain had a temper of his own, which was under excellent control, but he found it necessary to cross the quarter-deck twice before trusting himself to speak.
“After that occasion a week ago, when this boy was discovered in the lazarette doing God knows what, I should have thought your own judgment would have prevented your sending him there again. There are plenty of men in your watch, and if none of them knew where this old rope was, you should have gone yourself, rather than let that fool of a boy take a light into such a place.”
Bohlman smarted under this speech, though he maintained a discreet silence, knowing it would be useless to attempt to justify himself in the captain’s present humor. Inwardly, however, he cursed Dick Lewis for having forgotten the lantern, and thus bringing his superior’s censure upon himself.
Orders were given for Dick to come aft, and the youth shortly appeared on the quarter-deck for the second time that day in the role of culprit. He quailed before the captain’s glance, and nervously shifted his old felt hat from one hand to the other.
“Do you know why you have been sent for?”
Dick pointed to the accusing lantern, and said in a frightened tone: “Yes, sir. I—I remember now I forgot to bring up the lantern when—when I fetched the rope.”
This was a lie. He had turned the wick low and then left it in the lazarette purposely, knowing well that no one would enter the place after the day’s work was done. But for the accidental circumstance of its having been placed too near one of the deadlights, the presence of the lantern would never have been suspected.
“Do you know what I ought to do with you?”
The captain’s tones were so stern that Dick was hardly able to articulate “No, sir.”
“I ought to take a rope’s end and beat you within an inch of your life. That’s what any captain would have done twenty years ago, and what some would do now. You left this light down there among bales of oakum, sennit, old sails, rockets, signal-lights, and other inflammable stuff, and if there had been enough sea running to heel the bark over a trifle more, the lantern would have upset, setting the whole place on fire—and we out in the South Atlantic, a good week’s sail from the nearest port!”