“I think so, sir—­Mister LeVere explained that to me.”

“Oh, he did?  Well, he must have failed to make clear the fact that we enforce discipline aboard.  The next time you neglect to jump at an order, you are going to taste the cat.  You understand me?  You speak Spanish?”

“Yes, sir; I lived two years in Cuba.”

“I see; well now, do you happen to have any idea who I am?”

“No, sir—­only that you are one of the officers.”

“Then I will enforce the information on your mind so that you are not liable to forget; also the fact that hereafter you are to jump when I speak.  I am the first officer, and in command at present.  Pedro Estada is my name.  Now, you damned English whelp, remember that!”

Before I even suspected what was coming, his unexpected action as swift as the leap of a poised tiger, he struck me fairly between the eyes with the butt of a pistol, and I went down sprawling onto the deck.  For a moment I seemed, in spite of the viciousness of the blow, to retain a spark of consciousness, for I knew he kicked me savagely with his heavy sea boots; I felt the pain, and even heard the words, and curses, accompanying each brutal stroke.

“You drunken dog!  You whelp of a sea wolf!  You English cur!  Take that—­damn you!  And that!  You’ll not forget me for awhile, That’s it—­squirm, I like to see it.  When you wake up again, you’ll remember Pedro Estada, How did that feel, you grunting pig?  Here, LeVere, Manuel, throw this sot into the forecastle.  Curse you, here is one more to jog your memory.”

The heavy, iron-shod boot landed full in my face, and every sensation left me as I sank limply back, bloody and unconscious.

CHAPTER XII

A FRIEND IN THE FORECASTLE

I slowly and regretfully opened my eyes, aroused perhaps by a trampling of feet on the deck above, to find myself lying in an upper bunk of the forecastle.  I was partially covered by a ragged blanket, but for a few moments remained unable to comprehend the situation.  Yet the vivid memory soon returned, stimulated no doubt by the continuous aching of my body where Estada had so brutally kicked me with his heavy boots.  The first recollection of that assault brought with it a dull anger, strangely commingled with a thought of Dorothy Fairfax, and a sense of my own duty.  The heavy rolling of the bark clearly evidenced that we were already at sea, and bucking against a high wind.  Occasionally a monster wave broke over the cats-head, and struck thunderingly on the deck above me, the whole vessel trembling to the shock.  Oilskins hung to the deck beams, swung here and there at strange angles, while the single slush lantern dangled back and forth like the pendulum of a clock.