Picture Play Magazine (Oct-Nov 1915)

lin and the remaining member of the shanghaied crew. "Will you work?" Before the words were out of his mouth, Charlie and the other had beigun to nod their enthusiastic acquiescence. Charlie, to prove that his pledge was sincerely meant, hastily peeled off his coat and vest and threw ,them down on the deck. Then, with his eyes still fixed on the captain's face, while a propitiating smile rested upon !his own countenance, Charlie swept the. discarded garments back along the deck with him with his little bamboo cane, which he still carried, until he tripped ■ over them and sprawled on his ear. Picking himself up, he ran to carry out the captain's order for all hands to descend to the hold and set about the work of shifting cargo. On the way, he met a sailor carrying a cask on his shoulders. So anxious to work was Charlie that, catching up a mallet, he endeavored to drive one of the sailor's fingers into the bunghole of the barrel. Then, seizing a hand truck which he found in the vessel's hold, Charlie wheeled it forward and back in a frenzy of ineffectual work. Dropping the truck beside a heap of sand, used as ballast for the ship, Charlie grabbed up a shovel and began to load the truck — or to endeavor to do so. Of course, the sand ran through the latticework bottom of the truck as fast as he poured it on. The captain, cuffing him away from the futile task upon which he was engaged, ordered him to go up on deck. "You can give the signal to the engineer at the donkey, engine when to |! hoist, and when to lower away, on these sacks of grain that we're goin' to bring up out of the hold." Charlie, reaching the deck, narrowly missed being bumped over the side by a score or so of the heavy sacks in question that came swinging up out of the hold at that moment on the end of a hook that was attached to a two-inchthick rope. Righting his hat, which had slipped over one ear as he had ducked out of the way of the swaying sacks, Charlie gave the engineer the signal to lower away. The sacks descended on the run into the hold, and flattened out the captain there. Peering down through the open hatchway, Charlie saw what he had PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY done. Frantically, he signaled to the engineer to hoist. Then, not bothering to look around, but taking it for granted that the sacks had by that time swung away from the mouth of the hold, Charlie gave the signal to lower again. Once more the load descended like a shot into the hold and upon the captain. This time the sacks slipped off the hook, which swung free. The three shanghaied sailors who had been left in the hold with the captain, quick to see a chance to revenge themselves upon him, fastened the hook onto the seat of the skipper's trousers. Charlie, absorbed by this time to the exclusion of every other thought upon the business of giving the engineer his signals, signed to the latter to hoist. The captain came up out of the hold, clawing the air at the end of the rope. Charlie signaled for the engineer to swing it out to the right. The captain went sailing out over the deck, to hang suspended above the water. Then Charlie brought down both hands. And the engineer, obeying the signal, sent the captain plunging down into the sea. At the splash, Charlie looked up with a start.' He ran to the side and peered down upon the captain, who was struggling in the water. Wildly, Charlie signaled to the engineer to hoist him up, and then swing him to the left. After which he lowered both hands. And the captain descended into the hold once more. When he came up, it was with two of the sailors gripped by the back of their collars in his hands. The trio went swinging out over the ship's side once again, and down into the water. This time the hook and the seat of the skipper's trousers parted company, and he and the two tars were left battling in the waves without a means of support that was visible or otherwise. With the aid of the mate and the two remaining sailors on board. Charlie managed to rescue them from their watery plight. And then, before the captain had recovered his breath, and with it his strength, Charlie decided that the wisest move he could make would be to remove himself temporarily from sight. He descended to the ship's galley, inquiring of the cook, whom he found in the act of tasting a kettle of soup that he was preparing there, if he had an odd job or two that he could perform. 5 "There's always dishes to wash," the overworked cook informed him. "Git busy on them — and wash 'em in hot' water, too !" ■ Charlie looked into the kettle of soup on the stove. In substance, as well as temperature, it seemed to be what the cook had mentioned — hot water. He put a bar of soap into the kettle, and with it a half dozen plates ; and then, seizing a scrubbing brush, he proceeded to wash the dishes in the soup that was intended for the mate and the captain at the latter's table. The cook, unaware that Charlie had left the bar of soap in the kettle when he was through with it, served the soup to the skipper and the first officer of the ship five minutes later. The captain, foaming at the mouth— from the large piece he had bitten out of the bar of soap, which he had mistaken for suet — burst into the galley not ten seconds afterward and dashed the soup tureen down on the cook's head. "Did you put this soap in my soup?" roared the captain. The cook quakingly denied that he had done so. "Well, lemme git my hands onto the person that did," the skipper threatened, "and he'll wish he'd never been born, you can take my word for that !" Charlie paled and grasped a meat cleaver in both hands. At that moment the captain turned and saw him. With a disarming smile, Charlie hung the cleaver on the hook over his head, and pretended to busy hirrself with wiping down the legs of a table. The captain aimed a blow at his head. . Charlie ducked it and shot through the skipper's legs and out of the galley. "Take this tray with the rest of the captain's dinner on it in to him," the cook ordered him, when he returned to it. "And don't you dare drop it, or you'll get yours handed to you!" The ship, by this time, was violently pitching in a heavy cross sea ; and to obey the cook's injunction against spilling any of the tray's contents, called for some real juggling ability on Charlie's part. The -way in which he staggered into the captain's cabin and round and round it, backing out of one door and sliding in through the other, but always with the tray held right side up in his hands, should have been seen to be properly appreciated.