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Page 67
Dan looked at his father with a hurricane of irreverent winks.
"There was a tale he told us av drivin' four little ponies in a rig av
his own," said Long Jack. "Was that thrue now?"
"Very likely," said Cheyne. "Was it, Mama?"
"He had a little drag when we were in Toledo, I think," said the
mother.
Long Jack whistled. "Oh, Disko!" said he, and that was all.
"I wuz--I am mistook in my jedgments--worse'n the men o'
Marblehead," said Disko, as though the words were being
windlassed out of him. "I don't mind ownin' to you, Mr. Cheyne, as
I mistrusted the boy to be crary. He talked kinder odd about
money."
"So he told me."
"Did he tell ye anything else? 'Cause I pounded him once." This
with a somewhat anxious glance at Mrs. Cheyne.
"Oh, yes," Cheyne replied. "I should say it probably did him more
good than anything else in the world."
"I jedged 'twuz necessary, er I wouldn't ha' done it. I don't want you
to think we abuse our boys any on this packet."
"I don't think you do, Mr. Troop."
Mrs. Cheyne had been looking at the faces--Disko's ivory-yellow,
hairless, iron countenance; Uncle Salters's, with its rim of
agricultural hair; Penn's bewildered simplicity; Manuel's quiet
smile; Long Jack's grin of delight, and Tom Platt's scar. Rough, by
her standards, they certainly were; but she had a mother's wits in
her eyes, and she rose with out-stretched hands.
"Oh, tell me, which is who?" said she, half sobbing. "I want to
thank you and bless you--all of you."
"Faith, that pays me a hunder time," said Long Jack.
Disko introduced them all in due form. The captain of an old-time
Chinaman could have done no better, and Mrs. Cheyne babbled
incoherently. She nearly threw herself into Manuel's arms when
she understood that he had first found Harvey.
"But how shall I leave him dreeft?" said poor Manuel. "What do
you yourself if you find him so? Eh, wha-at? We are in one good
boy, and I am ever so pleased he come to be your son."
"And he told me Dan was his partner!" she cried. Dan was already
sufficiently pink, but he turned a rich crimson when Mrs. Cheyne
kissed him on both cheeks before the assembly. Then they led her
forward to show her the foc'sle, at which she wept again, and must
needs go down to see Harvey's identical bunk, and there she found
the nigger cook cleaning up the stove, and he nodded as though
she were some one he had expected to meet for years. They tried,
two at a time, to explain the boat's daily life to her, and she sat by
the pawl-post, her gloved hands on the greasy table, laughing with
trembling lips and crying with dancing eyes.
"And who's ever to use the 'We're Here' after this?" said Long Jack
to Tom Platt. "I feel as if she'd made a cathedral av ut all."
"Cathedral!" sneered Tom Platt. "Oh, if it had bin even the Fish
C'mmission boat instid of this bally-hoo o' blazes. If we only hed
some decency an' order an' side-boys when she goes over! She'll
have to climb that ladder like a hen, an' we--we ought to be mannin'
the yards!"
"Then Harvey was not mad," said Penn, slowly, to Cheyne.
"No, indeed--thank God," the big millionaire replied, stooping
down tenderly.
"It must be terrible to be mad. Except to lose your child, I do not
know anything more terrible. But your child has come back? Let us
thank God for that."
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