Free The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson: The Dream Of X & Other Fantastic Visions by William Hope Hodgson Page B

overboard. They lifted a hatch-cover, and saw the pretty face of the girl, looking up brightly at them.
    “I’ve got tired of being down here,” she assured them happily, whilst the third mate nearly fell down the hatchway, in his astonishment, delight and surprise at this unexpected wonder from the gods.
    News of the find was taken to the skipper, who blossomed suddenly with joy, and ran like a lad all the way to the hatch, where with his own hands he rigged a ladder to enable the dainty maid to ascend from the hold. And Tommy, thoroughly sick of the darkness, and able to have come up in a moment like any cat, had to fight down his impatience, and finally ascend in decorous fashion, with the third mate and the captain each vying with the other to give her much unnecessary assistance.
    “I always meant to be a stowaway,” she explained to the group of officers who now surrounded her. She looked at the captain. “I thought I’d come in your ship,” she said sweetly. She held out a bundle. “See,” she added, “I’ve brought some clothes, and there are some more down in that nasty place. Please, Mr. Third Mate, will you get them for me?” It was obvious that Tommy was enjoying himself, and that he had not been brought up with “elder sisters” for nothing!
    Later, the captain took Miss Jenny the round of the cabins, so that she might take her choice. She chose the biggest, but remarked that it smelled fusty, at which—as Tommy had intended—the captain set the steward to scrub it out thoroughly, and wash the paintwork. Then, very well satisfied, Tommy returned to the poop, and sat languidly in the captain’s deck-chair, whilst the captain and the third mate, rigged up a weather cloth to windward of him, to protect him from the wind.
    Needless to say again, Tommy was enjoying himself. He enjoyed especially the efforts of the five other ’prentices to obtain surreptitious views of the poop deck. Finally, the third mate also became cognisant of these efforts, and went down on to the main deck to explain in his own fashion how unsuited they were to the manners of the “captain’s young gentlemen.”
    Tommy, much trained by painful experience, had watched the departure of the third mate, and now listened keenly. Immediately afterwards, the sound of a scuffle, and a lad crying out, told him that the third mate was indulging his feet. The girl jumped from her chair, furious. Now she would reap the real reward of her position. She raced to the break of the poop, and looked down, and the skipper came quickly after her; for he, too, had heard the muffled sounds, and was perturbed by the swift action of this pretty maid, who was staring down now on to the main deck.
    “Oh, you horrible, brutal man!” the skipper heard her say, in clear-cut, passionate tones of scorn, that could be heard fore and aft. “Fancy a great, ugly coward like you kicking a boy! I couldn’t have believed it, if I hadn’t seen it.” She turned to the skipper. “Captain,” she said, tensely, and looking very pale and likable, for Tommy was truly shaken with anger, “Captain, do you allow this sort of thing?” And the skipper, who had before now, as you know, been forced to interfere between the third and his victim, though hard himself of heart, found himself, in the position of the “paternal and benevolent” captain, forced to speak both didactically and morally. Moreover, he, himself, was very angry that the third mate should have brought about this scene. He stooped over the rail of the break, and looked down at the sullen and half-shamed third, where he stood, still holding the lad he had been hammering, whilst a little way off, waited a group of the ’prentices, looking tense and excited.
    “Let go that boy, mister!” said the skipper. “I’m ashamed of you, Mister Davies. I won’t have this sort of thing in my ship.”
    The third mate stared up furiously at the skipper. He felt that his superior was being gratuitously