“See you later, captain! I have forgotten something.”
“Well, it’s too late now, if it’s got anything to do with going ashore!” cried the commander. “Haul in that gang plank there!” and he swung the engine room telegraph lever over to half speed ahead. The Silver Star began slowly to leave her dock, while Tom found himself wondering who the mysterious passenger could be.
“But it doesn’t concern me,” he mused. “I’ve got enough other troubles.”
If Tom had only known, though, the belated passenger did concern him, and vitally, too.
[CHAPTER IV]
A PUZZLED CAPTAIN
Amid a confusing sound of tooting whistles, the clanging of bells, hoarse commands shouted back and forth, the Silver Star made her way through the shipping of the harbor, and pointed her nose toward the mysterious Pacific—the ocean that held so many strange lands and islands,—the ocean on whose broad bosom perhaps, Tom’s father and mother were drifting helplessly about, in a wreck. Or mayhap they lay beneath the waves.
But Tom did not dare dwell on that terrible possibility and, for the time being, he resolutely put all thoughts of never seeing his parents again, out of his mind.
“I’m just going to find them!” he cried bravely, though he knew he had a hard task ahead of him.