Finally the captain came on deck, and this time the officer wasn't taking all the credit for himself. He pointed to the foreman, who pointed to the stevedore, and pretty soon they were all pointing at Calvin.
Now, of course, Calvin could stop fiddling with the leak. He stopped it cold. But he wasn't done. As the captain headed for the gangplank, Calvin sent his bug to seek out all the nearby rats that he could sense lurking under the wharf and among the crates and barrels and on the other ships. By the time the captain got halfway down the gangplank, a couple of dozen rats were racing up the very same bridge, heading for the ship. The captain tried in vain to shoo them back, but Calvin had filled them with courage and grim determination to reach the deck– food, food, Calvin was promising them– and they merely dodged and went on. Dozens more were streaming across the planking of the pier, and the captain was fairly dancing to avoid tripping on rats and falling on his face. On deck, sailors with mops and bowling pins were striking at the rats, trying to knock or sweep them off into the sea.
Then, as suddenly as he had launched the rats, Calvin sent them a new message: Get off this ship. Fire, fire. Leaks. Drowning. Fear.
Squealing and scurrying, all the rats that he had sent aboard came rushing back down the gangplank and all the lines and cables connecting the ship to the shore. And all the rats that had already been aboard, lurking in the cargo hold and in the dark wet cellar and in the hidden caves in the joints and beams of the ship, they also gushed up out of the hatches and portholes like water bubbling out of a new spring. The captain stopped cold to watch them leave. Finally, when all the rat traffic had disappeared into their hiding places on the wharf and the other ships, the captain turned toward Calvin and strode to him. Through it all the man had never lost his dignity– even while dancing to avoid the rats. My kind of man, thought Calvin. I must watch him to learn how gentlemen behave.
“How did you know there was a leak on my ship?” asked the captain.
“You're an Englishman,” said Calvin. “You don't believe in what I can see and do.”
“Nevertheless, I believe in what I can see, and there was nothing natural about that leak.”
“I'd say them rats might have been doing it. Good thing for you they all left your ship.”
“Rats and leaks,” said the captain. “What do you want, boy?”
“I want to be called a man, sir,” said Calvin. “Not a boy.”
“Why do you wish harm to me and my ship? Has someone of my crew done you an offense?”
“I don't know what you're talking about,” said Calvin. “I reckon you're not such a fool as to blame the one as told you you had a leak.”
“I'm also not such a fool as to think you knew of anything you didn't have the power to cause or cure at will. Were the rats your doing as well?”
I was as surprised as you were by their behavior," said Calvin. "Didn't seem natural, all them rats rushing onto a sinking ship. But then they seemed to come to their senses and leave again. Every single rat, I daresay. Now, that would be an interesting voyage, wouldn't it– to cross the ocean without any loss of your food supply to the nibbling of rats."
“What do you want from me?” asked the captain.
“I stopped to do you a favor, with no thought of benefit to my own self,” said Calvin, trying to sound like an educated Englishman and knowing from the expression on the captain's face that he was failing pathetically. “But it happens that I am in need of first-class passage to Europe.”
The captain smiled thinly. “Why in the world would you want to book passage on a leaking ship?”
“But sir,” said Calvin, “I've got a sort of knack for spotting leaks. And I can promise you that if I were aboard your ship, during the whole voyage there'd be not a single leak, even in the stoutest storm.” Calvin had no idea whether he could keep a ship tight during all the stresses of a storm at sea, but odds were that he'd never have to find out, either.
“Correct me if I'm wrong,” said the captain, “but am I to guess that if I take you on my ship, first class, without your paying a farthing, I'll find no problem with leaks and not a rat on my ship? While if I refuse, I'll find my ship at the bottom of the harbor?”
“That would be a rare disaster,” said Calvin. “How could such a well-made ship possibly sink faster than your boys could pump?”
“I saw how the leak moved from place to place. I saw how strangely the rats behaved. I may not believe in your American knacks, but I know when I'm in the presence of unaccountable power.”
Calvin felt pride flush through his body like ale.
Suddenly he felt the barrel of a pistol just under his breastbone. He looked down to see that the captain had somehow come up with a weapon.
“What's to stop me from blowing a hole in your belly?” asked the captain.
“The likelihood of your dancing on the end of an American rope,” said Calvin. “There ain't no law against knacks here, sir, and saying that somebody was doing witchery ain't cause enough to kill him the way it is in England.”
“But it's to England you're going,” said the captain. “What's to stop me from taking you on my ship, then having you arrested the moment you step ashore?”
“Nothing,” said Calvin. “You could do that. You could even kill me in my sleep during the voyage and cast my body overboard into the sea, telling all the others that you had to dispose of the body of a plague victim as quickly as possible. You think I'm a fool, not to think of that stuff?”
“So go away and leave me and my ship alone.”
“If you killed me, what would keep the planks from pulling free of the beams of your boat? What would stop your boat from turning into scraps of lumber bobbing on the water?”
The captain eyed him curiously.
“First-class passage is ludicrous for you. The other first-class passengers would snub you at once, and no doubt they'd assume I'd brought you aboard as my catamite. It would ruin my career anyway, to permit an uncouth, unlettered ruffian like you to sail among my gentle passengers. To put it plainly, young master, you may have power over rats and planks, but you have none over rich men and women.”
“Teach me,” said Calvin.
“There aren't enough hours in the day or days in the week.”
“Teach me,” said Calvin again.
“You come here threatening me with destruction of my ship by the evil powers of Satan, and then dare to ask me to teach you to be a gentleman?”
“If you believed my powers were from the devil,” said Calvin, “then why didn't you once say a prayer to ward me off?”
The captain glared at him for a moment, then smiled, grimly but not without genuine mirth. “Touche,” he said.
“Whatever the devil that means,” said Calvin.
“It's a fencing term,” said the captain.
“I must've put up ten miles of fences in my life,” said Calvin. “Post and rail, stone, wire, and, picket, every kind, and I never heard of no tooshay.”
The captain's smile broadened. “There is something attractive in your challenge. You may have some interesting… what do you call them… knacks? But you're still a poor boy from the farm. I've taken many a peasant lad and turned him into a first-rate seaman. But I've never taken a boy who wasn't a gentleman born and turned him into something that could pass for civilized.”
“Consider me the challenge of your life.”
“Oh, believe me, I already do. I haven't altogether decided not to kill you, of course. But it seems to me that since you mean to cause me trouble anyway, why not accept the challenge and see if I can work a miracle just as inexplicable and impossible as any of the nasty pranks you've played an me this morning?”
“First class, not steerage,” Calvin insisted.