around, makes a rather serious business? But
don't you worry any about the future. Everything is rosy. We are safe
at sea, and booming along with a gale at our backs. The law may have
gobbled up Wild Bob Carew and his crew--hope it did, but suspect my
haughty captain squirmed out of it as he usually does. We have made
our getaway, anyhow."

At sea! Disturbing visions were dancing through Martin's mind. At sea!

It was one thing to stand in an office window, idly watching passing
ships, and longing to be at sea. It was quite another thing to awaken
without foreknowledge, in a stuffy and careening berth, on a strange
ship that was plowing through a storm, possessed of a wounded head and
a gadabout stomach, and be informed casually by a grinning gnome that
he was fleeing the law--that he had been kidnaped so he would avoid the
consequences of a wild and deadly street brawl.

A man accustomed to rough buffets and fickle fortune might well blink
his eyes over such a situation. To Martin, the clerk, to whose
law-abiding existence both fights and police had hitherto been
strangers, the information was more than a shock. It was an
earthquake. His world was tumbling about his ears.

The jolt galvanized him to action. He sat up in his bunk and swung his
legs over the side. For a second he had some wild idea of rushing
forth, and somehow stepping ashore, and back into yesterday. Then he
steadied himself.

"But what will I do?" he demanded of the hunchback. "Where are you
going? I am not a sailor, I am a clerk--and my job----"

"My friend," said Little Billy, "I think you may definitely assume that
your connection with the legal profession is severed. Your job is
close on two hundred miles astern. But as I told you a moment since,
you need not worry about your future. Why, you have already been
adopted into the happy family--you are already one of the jolly company
of the brig _Cohasset_, with equal rights, and an equal share. And if
we have decent luck with this job ahead of us, you will have no cause
to grieve at being yanked out of your berth ashore. It isn't so bad,
is it? We know you leave no family behind--oh, yes, we know quite a
lot about you, Martin Blake, we had to look you up--and I think you
will be blessing us in a day or two for prying you out of your rut.
You are the right sort. You were never cut out for a clerk! By Jove!
You should hear the bosun tell how you bowled over Carew, himself