CHAPTER XII C. B.’s Great Temptation
From that eventful evening the friendship between these two most strangely assorted chums deepened in force until every man in the ship knew certainly, what he had only suspected before, that whoever took it in hand to do despite to one of them would surely have to reckon with the other. And that knowledge had a wholly quietening and sweetening effect upon all hands. Every one knew by this time, knew intimately, that C. B.’s principles were of a high and noble kind, that he would always be on the side of the good and true, and would be ready to put up with much trouble and annoyance from anybody rather than assert himself. But they all knew also that his chum Merritt was of a totally different stamp. They felt that, given what he considered cause, h
