“If I’d had any idea that you really intended hitting me you’d have been a dead man before your fist reached me, Byrne.  You took me entirely by surprise; but that’s all in the past—­I’m willing to let bygones be bygones, and help you out of the pretty pickle you’ve got yourself into.  Then we can go ahead with our work as though nothing had happened.  What do you say?”

“I didn’t know yeh was kiddin,” replied the mucker, “or I wouldn’t have hit yeh.  Yeh acted like yeh meant it.”

“Very well, that part’s understood,” said Theriere.  “Now will you come out if I can square the thing with the skipper so’s you won’t get more than a day or so in irons—­he’ll have to give you something to save his own face; but I promise that you’ll get your food regularly and that you won’t be beaten up the way you were before when he had you below.  If he won’t agree to what I propose I give you my word to tell you so.”

“Go ahead,” said Billy Byrne; “I don’t trust nobody wen I don’t have to; but I’ll be dinged if I see any other way out of it.”

Theriere returned to the deck and seeking out the skipper drew him to one side.

“I can get him up peaceably if I can assure him that he’ll only get a day or so in the cooler, with full rations and no beatings.  I think, sir, that that will be the easiest way out of it.  We cannot spare a man now—­if we want to get the fellow later we can always find some pretext.”

“Very well, Mr. Theriere,” replied the skipper, “I’ll leave the matter entirely in your hands—­you can do what you want with the fellow; it’s you as had your face punched.”

Theriere returned immediately to the forecastle, from which he presently emerged with the erstwhile recalcitrant Byrne, and for two days the latter languished in durance vile, and that was the end of the episode, though its effects were manifold.  For one thing it implanted in the heart of Theriere a personal hatred for the mucker, so that while heretofore his intention of ridding himself of the man when he no longer needed him was due purely to a matter of policy, it was now reinforced by a keen desire for personal revenge.  The occurrence had also had its influence upon Barbara Harding, in that it had shown her Mr. Theriere in a new light—­one that reflected credit upon him.  She had thought his magnanimous treatment of the sailor little short of heroic; and it had deepened the girl’s horror of Billy Byrne until it now amounted to little short of an obsession.  So vivid an impression had his brutality made upon her that she would start from deep slumber, dreaming that she was menaced by him.

After Billy was released for duty following his imprisonment, he several times passed the girl upon deck.  He noticed that she shrank from him in disgust and terror; but what surprised him was that instead of the thrill of pride which he formerly would have felt at this acknowledgment of his toughness, for Billy prided himself on being a tough, he now felt a singular resentment against the girl for her attitude, so that he came to hate her even more than he had before hated.  Formerly he had hated her for the things she stood for, now he hated her for herself.