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Page 7
Like many other unfortunate young people, Harvey had never in all
his life received a direct order--never, at least, without long,
and sometimes tearful, explanations of the advantages of obedience
and the reasons for the request. Mrs. Cheyne lived in fear of
breaking his spirit, which, perhaps, was the reason that she
herself walked on the edge of nervous prostration. He could not
see why he should be expected to hurry for any man's pleasure, and
said so. "Your dad can come down here if he's so anxious to talk
to me. I want him to take me to New York right away. It'll pay
him."
Dan opened his eyes as the size and beauty of this joke dawned on
him. "Say, Dad!" he shouted up the foc'sle hatch, "he says you
kin slip down an' see him ef you're anxious that way. 'Hear, Dad?"
The answer came back in the deepest voice Harvey had ever heard
from a human chest: "Quit foolin', Dan, and send him to me."
Dan sniggered, and threw Harvey his warped bicycle shoes. There
was something in the tones on the deck that made the boy dissemble
his extreme rage and console himself with the thought of gradually
unfolding the tale of his own and his father's wealth on the
voyage home. This rescue would certainly make him a hero among his
friends for life. He hoisted himself on deck up a perpendicular
ladder, and stumbled aft, over a score of obstructions, to where a
small, thick-set, clean-shaven man with gray eyebrows sat on a
step that led up to the quarter-deck. The swell had passed in the
night, leaving a long, oily sea, dotted round the horizon with the
sails of a dozen fishing-boats. Between them lay little black
specks, showing where the dories were out fishing. The schooner,
with a triangular riding-sail on the mainmast, played easily at
anchor, and except for the man by the cabin-roof --"house" they
call it--she was deserted.
"Mornin'--Good afternoon, I should say. You've nigh slep' the
clock round, young feller," was the greeting.
"Mornin'," said Harvey. He did not like being called "young feller";
and, as one rescued from drowning, expected sympathy. His
mother suffered agonies whenever he got his feet wet; but this
mariner did not seem excited.
"Naow let's hear all abaout it. It's quite providential, first an' last,
fer all concerned. What might be your name? Where from (we
mistrust it's Noo York), an' where baound (we mistrust it's
Europe)?"
Harvey gave his name, the name of the steamer, and a short history
of the accident, winding up with a demand to be taken back
immediately to New York, where his father would pay anything
any one chose to name.
"H'm," said the shaven man, quite unmoved by the end of Harvey's
speech. "I can't say we think special of any man, or boy even,
that falls overboard from that kind o' packet in a flat ca'am.
Least of all when his excuse is that he's seasick."
"Excuse!" cried Harvey. "D'you suppose I'd fall overboard into
your dirty little boat for fun?"
"Not knowin' what your notions o' fun may be, I can't rightly say,
young feller. But if I was you, I wouldn't call the boat which,
under Providence, was the means o' savin' ye, names. In the first
place, it's blame irreligious. In the second, it's annoyin' to my
feelin's--an' I'm Disko Troop o' the 'We're Here' o' Gloucester,
which you don't seem rightly to know."
"I don't know and I don't care," said Harvey. "I'm grateful enough
for being saved and all that, of course! but I want you to
understand that the sooner you take me back to New York the
better it'll pay you."
"Meanin'--haow?" Troop raised one shaggy eyebrow over a
suspiciously mild blue eye.
"Dollars and cents," said Harvey, delighted to think that he was
making an impression. "Cold dollars and cents." He thrust a hand
into a pocket, and threw out his stomach a little, which was his
way of being grand. "You've done the best day's work you ever did
in your life when you pulled me in. I'm all the son Harvey Cheyne
has."
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