“Captured!  What for?”

“Nothing.  Living, I suppose.  I crawled into a haystack to sleep one night, because it was warmer, and along comes a village constable and arrests me for being a tramp.  At first they thought I was a runaway, and telegraphed my description all over.  I told them I did n’t have any people, but they would n’t believe me for a long while.  And then, when nobody claimed me, the judge sent me to a boys’ ‘refuge’ in San Francisco.”

He stopped and peered intently in the direction of the shore.  The darkness and the silence in which the men had been swallowed up was profound.  Nothing was stirring save the rising wind.

“I thought I ’d die in that ‘refuge.’  It was just like being in jail.  We were locked up and guarded like prisoners.  Even then, if I could have liked the other boys it might have been all right.  But they were mostly street-boys of the worst kind—­lying, and sneaking, and cowardly, without one spark of manhood or one idea of square dealing and fair play.  There was only one thing I did like, and that was the books.  Oh, I did lots of reading, I tell you!  But that could n’t make up for the rest.  I wanted the freedom and the sunlight and the salt water.  And what had I done to be kept in prison and herded with such a gang?  Instead of doing wrong, I had tried to do right, to make myself better, and that ’s what I got for it.  I was n’t old enough, you see, to reason anything out.

“Sometimes I ’d see the sunshine dancing on the water and showing white on the sails, and the Reindeer cutting through it just as you please, and I ’d get that sick I would know hardly what I did.  And then the boys would come against me with some of their meannesses, and I ’d start in to lick the whole kit of them.  Then the men in charge would lock me up and punish me.  Well, I could n’t stand it any longer; I watched my chance and ran for it.  Seemed as though there was n’t any place on the land for me, so I picked up with French Pete and went back on the bay.  That ’s about all there is to it, though I ’m going to try it again when I get a little older—­old enough to get a square deal for myself.”

“You ’re going to go back on the land with me,” Joe said authoritatively, laying a hand on his shoulder.  “That ’s what you ’re going to do.  As for—­”

Bang! a revolver-shot rang out from the shore.  Bang! bang!  More guns were speaking sharply and hurriedly.  A man’s voice rose wildly on the air and died away.  Somebody began to cry for help.  Both boys were on their feet on the instant, hoisting the mainsail and getting everything ready to run.  The Reindeer boy was doing likewise.  A man, roused from his sleep on the yacht, thrust an excited head through the skylight, but withdrew it hastily at sight of the two stranger sloops.  The intensity of waiting was broken, the time for action come.

CHAPTER XVIII