oice grated harshly on the ear, "I don't
think the deck agrees with you. Suppose you try the fo'mast head for
an hour. Come! Up you go!"

In his bewilderment Ralph attempted to mount the mainmast ratlines in a
lumbering way.

"Start him up, Long Tom," roared the captain. "The fool don't even
know where the fo'mast is."

Bludson again seized Ralph by the collar, propelled him the length of
the deck and gave him a long boost up the forward ratlines.

Faint from sickness, shivering in his wet clothes, dizzy with the peril
of his position, yet with a rising passion in his heart, the boy began
to ascend. With a shifting foundation under his feet, a stiff wind
flattening him against the shrouds, and a deathly swaying to and fro
that increased as he went higher, he managed to reach the foretop.
Crawling through the lubber hole he rested and held on.

"Up with you!" shouted the captain, but Ralph gave no heed.

He was weak, faint and dizzy. The heaving plain below made his head
swin [Transcriber's note: swim?]. The schooner's deck looked fearfully
small.

Casting his eye upward, he saw a narrowing ladder of rope shooting to a
mere dot of a resting place twenty feet above him. It did not look as
if a monkey could have held on there.

"Why in the ---- don't you go on!" roared Gary, who was now pale with
contained fury.

"I think the lad is sick, sir," said Duff, who happened to be near.
"See--by heavens!--he has fainted."

"The kid is shamming," growled the first mate, whose watch it now was.
"A dose of the paddle would bring him to, I'll warrant."

"I think you are right, Rucker," said Gary without paying any heed to
the second mate. "Lay for'ard there two of you and lash him to the
topmast shrouds. He shall have his hour up there, dead or alive, then
we'll settle his shamming."

Two sailors, seizing some loose line, ran up the foremast to where
Ralph had sunk back in a swoon, overcome by the combined effects of
illness and the terrors of his position.

Lifting him to his feet, they bound him to the topmast ratlines so that
his feet rested on the little platform. As they came down one said to
the other:

"He ain't shamming. The lad is sick enough for a doctor, that's what
'e is, mate."

"Shet up," quoth his companion. "Let the captain hear you and he'll
put you on bread and water for three days, if no worse comes. Every
tub stands on its own bottom in this craft."

Meanwhile Neb had served bre