The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant Part 21

"What's his name?" asked the other.

"Captain Gething," said the skipper.

The old man started, and his face changed to an unwholesome white. "I never heard of him," he muttered, thickly, trying to pa.s.s on.

"n.o.body else seems to have heard of him either," said the skipper, turning with him; "that's the difficulty."

He waited for a reply, but none came. The old man, with set face, walked on rapidly.

"He's supposed to be in hiding," continued the skipper. "If you should ever run across him you might tell him that his wife and daughter Annis have been wanting news of him for five years, and that he's making all this trouble and fuss about a man who is as well and hearty as I am.

Good-morning."

The old man stopped abruptly, and taking his outstretched hand, drew a deep breath.

"Tell him-the-man-is alive?" he said in a trembling voice.

"Just that," said the skipper gently, and seeing the working of the other's face, looked away. For a little while they both stood silent, then the skipper spoke again.

"If I take you back," he said, "I am to marry your daughter Annis." He put his hand on the old man's, and without a word the old man turned and went with him.

They walked back slowly towards the harbor, the young man talking, the old man listening. Outside the post office the skipper came to a sudden stop.

"How would it be to send a wire?" he asked.

"I think," said the old man eagerly, as he followed him in, "it would be the very thing."

He stood watching attentively as the skipper tore up form after form, meditatively sucking the chained lead pencil with a view to inspiration between whiles. Captain Gething, as an illiterate, had every sympathy with one involved in the throes of writing, and for some time watched his efforts in respectful silence. After the fifth form had rolled a little crumpled ball on to the floor, however, he interposed.

"I can't think how to put it," said the skipper apologetically. "I don't want to be too sudden, you know."

"Just so," said the other, and stood watching him until, with a smile of triumph twitching the corners of his mouth, the skipper bent down and hastily scrawled off a message.

"You've done it?" he said with relief.

"How does this strike you?" asked the skipper reading. "Your father sends love to you both."

"Beautiful," murmured Captain Gething.

"Not too sudden," said the skipper; "it doesn't say I've found you, or anything of that sort; only hints at it. I'm proud of it."

"You ought to be," said Captain Gething, who was in the mood to be pleased with anything. "Lord, how pleased they'll be, poor dears! I'm ashamed to face 'em."

"Stuff!" said the skipper, who was in high spirits, as he clapped him on the back. "What you want is a good stiff drink."

He led him into a neighboring bar, and a little later the crew of the schooner, who had been casting anxious and curious glances up the quay, saw the couple approaching them. Both captains were smoking big cigars in honor of the occasion, and Captain Gething, before going on board, halted, and in warm terms noticed the appearance of the Seamew.

The crew, pausing in their labors, looked on expectantly as they reached the deck. On the cook's face was a benevolent and proprietary smile, while Henry concealed his anguish of soul under an appearance of stoic calm.

"This is the man," said the skipper, putting his hand on the cook's shoulder, "this is the man that found you, cap'n. Smartest and best chap I ever had sail with me!"

Flushed with these praises, but feeling that he fully deserved them, the cook took the hand which Captain Gething, after a short struggle with the traditions of ship masters, extended, and shook it vigorously.

Having once started, he shook hands all round, winding up with the reluctant Henry.

"Why, I've seen this boy before," he said, starting. "Had a chat with him yesterday. That's what brought me down here to-day, to see whether I couldn't find him again."

"Well I'm hanged!" said the astonished skipper. "He's as sharp as needles as a rule. What were you doing with your eyes, Henry?"

In an agony of mortification and rage, as he saw the joy depicted on the faces of the crew, the boy let the question pa.s.s. The cook, at the skipper's invitation, followed him below, his reappearance being the signal for anxious inquiries on the part of his friends. He answered them by slapping his pocket, and then thrusting his hand in produced five gold pieces. At first it was all congratulations, then Sam, after a short, hard, cough, struck a jarring note.

"Don't you wish now as you'd joined the syndikit, d.i.c.k?" he asked boldly.

"Wot?" said the cook, hastily replacing the coins.

"I arst 'im whether he was sorry 'e 'adn't joined us," said Sam, trying to speak calmly.

The cook threw out his hand and looked round appealingly to the landscape to bear witness to this appalling attempt at brigandage.

"You needn't look like that," said Sam. "Two pun ten's wot I want of you, an' I'll take it afore you lose it."

Then the cook found words, and with d.i.c.k and Henry for audience made an impa.s.sioned speech in defence of vested interests and the sacred rights of property. Never in his life had he been so fluent or so inventive, and when he wound up a n.o.ble pa.s.sage on the rights of the individual, in which he alluded to Sam as a fat sharper, he felt that his case was won.

"Two pun ten," said Sam, glowering at him.

The cook, moistening his lips with his tongue, resumed his discourse.

"Two pun ten," said Sam again; "an' I don't know what you're goin' to do with your half, but I'm goin' to give ten bob to d.i.c.k."

"Why don't you give the man his money?" said d.i.c.k warmly.

"Becos the syndikit 'ad all fell through," said the cook. "The syndikit was only a syndikit when we was both looking for 'im together. If the syndikit-"

"That's enough about 'em," said d.i.c.k impatiently; "give the man 'is money. Everybody knows you was goin' shares. I'm ashamed of you, cook, I wouldn't have thought it of you."

It ended in simple division, d.i.c.k taking what was over on Sam's side and more than hinting that he was ready to do the cook a similar service.

The cook turned a deaf ear, however, and declining in emphatic language to step ash.o.r.e and take something, went and sulked in the galley.

At dinner-time a telegram came from Annis, and the next morning brought a letter from her which the skipper read aloud to the proud father. He read it somewhat jerkily, omitting sentences and halves of sentences which he thought might not interest the old man, or perhaps, what was more likely, would interest him a great deal. After that they were all busy taking in the cargo, Captain Gething, in shirt and trousers, insisting upon lending a hand.

The cargo was all in by five o'clock and the hatches down. Below in the cabin the two captains and the mate sat over a substantial tea.

"Get away about three, I s'pose?" said the mate.

The skipper nodded.

"Get away about three," he repeated, "and then for Northfleet. I'll have all the hands to the wedding, and you shall be best man, Jim."

"And Henry 'll be a little page in white satin knickers holding up the bride's train," said the mate, spluttering at the picture he had conjured up.

They all laughed-all except Henry, who, having come down with some hot water from the galley, surveyed the ribald scene with a scarcely concealed sneer.