Black Bartlemys Treasure

"What's here, Martin, are ye sick?" he questioned.

"A vertigo!" I mumbled, "I'll into the air!" In a little the dizziness abating, I got me out on deck and found in the rushing wind mighty comfort and refreshment, while Adam steadied me with his arm. "Let be!" says I, shaking off his hold. "'Twas nought--I'll go sleep again." And waiting for no more I stumbled down the quarter-ladder; but even as I went, the haze seemed to close about me thicker than ever, and groping my way to the ship's side I sank across the bulwark and was miserably sick. This agony passing, I made my way below until I reached the orlop; but now feeling my sickness upon me again I crept away into a dark corner and cast me down there. And lying thus in my misery I little by little became aware of someone weeping hard by, a desolate sobbing very pitiful to hear. Insomuch that (maugre my weakness) I got up and going whence this sobbing proceeded, presently came on a small, huddled figure, and stooping, saw it was a little lad. At my step he started to his knees, elbow upraised as if expecting a blow.

"Why d'ye weep, boy?" I questioned. "What's your trouble?"

"Nowt!" says he, cowering away; but taking him by his little, thin shoulders I lifted him into the dim light of a swinging lanthorn, and looked into a small, pallid face swollen and disfigured by cuts and bruises wrought by some brutal hand.

"Who did this?" I demanded.

"Nobody!" says he, gulping a sob.

"Who are you?"

"'Tween-decks boy."

"How old are you, child?"

At this he stared up at me out of his swollen eyes, then covering his face in ragged sleeve broke into convulsive sobbing.

"What now?" says I, drawing him beside me. "What now?"

"She used to call me 'child'--my mother--" and here his grief choked him. Now as I looked down upon this little, pitiful creature, I forgot my sickness in sudden, fierce anger.

"Boy," said I, "who's been flogging you--speak!"

"Red Andy," he gasped, "'e be always a' doin' of it 'e be--wish I was dead like my mother!"

"Jim, ho Jimmy," roared a voice from somewhere in the gloom forward, "Jim--plague seize ye, show a leg, will 'ee--" Here (and before I could stay him) the boy started up and pattered away drying his tears as he ran. Now as I lay there I kicked off my shoes and hearkened expectant. Thus, all at once I heard a murmur rising to a wail that ended in a shrill scream, and getting to my feet I crept stealthily forward. Past main and foremasts I crept, past dark store-rooms and cubby-holes, and so to a crack of light, and clapping my eye thereto, espied two fellows rolling dice and beyond them the boy, his hands lashed miserably to a staple in the bulkhead, his little body writhing under the cruel blows of a rope's-end wielded by a great, red-headed fellow.