“Well, but you were disobedient.  You told him, up and down, you wouldn’t do what he ordered you to do.”

“No matter for that.  You had a chance to see the spirit of the man.  He was a perfect demon.  He put me in irons!” exclaimed Shuffles, still groaning under this indignity.  “I have been insulted and outraged, and I will teach him that Bob Shuffles is not to be treated in that manner!  I will be revenged upon him, if it costs me my life.”

“The fellows won’t go into any such desperate game as that,” replied Wilton, cautiously.

“But there will be fun in the thing,” added the malcontent, softening his tone.  “We shall have the ship all to ourselves.  We needn’t trouble ourselves anything about Latin and Greek, and trigonometry and algebra.  We shall go in for a good time generally.”

“It is all moonshine; it can’t be done.  What’s the use of talking about such a thing?” said Wilton.

“It can be done, and it shall be,” replied Shuffles, stamping his foot on the deck.

“How?”

“I am not quite ready to tell you yet.”

“Very well; I don’t want to know anything more about it,” answered the timid conspirator, who was almost disgusted at the foolhardiness of the plan.

“I can get along without you,” added Shuffles, with assumed indifference.

“I would rather have you do so.”

“All right; but you will want to come in when we have got along a little farther.”

“Perhaps I shall; if I do, I suppose the door will be open to me.”

“It may be open; but perhaps you can’t walk into the cabin then.”

“Why not?”

“Do you suppose the fellows who do the burden of the work are going to be shut out of the cabin?  If you join at the eleventh hour, you will have to be what you are now—­a foremast hand.”

“What can I be if I join now?”

“Second or third officer.”

“Who will be first.”

“I can’t mention his name yet.  He belongs in the cabin now.”

“You don’t mean so!” said Wilton, astonished to learn that his bold companion expected to find friends among the present officers of the ship.

“I know what I’m about,” replied Shuffles, confidently.

With this information Wilton thought more favorably of the mad enterprise.  If it was to be a winning game, he wished to have a part in it; if a losing one, he desired to avoid it.  There was something in the decided manner of the chief conspirator which made an impression upon this doubting mind.

“I don’t want to go in till I know more about it,” said he, after walking two or three times across the top-gallant forecastle.

“You can’t know anything more about it until you have been toggled,” replied Shuffles.

“Toggled?” repeated the sceptic, curiously.

“This thing is to be well managed, Wilton.  We shall not use any hard words, that outsiders can understand; and if any of them happen to hear anything that don’t concern them, they will not know what it means.  Will you join, or not?”