When I told him what a wonderful service he had performed, he smiled and said, "Surely you can't mean me." I insisted, telling him in detail how, when two men had been washed overboard, he had seized the wheel and saved the ship. "You must be mistaken," he protested, "I have not been on deck, and I cannot steer, I know nothing whatever about a ship as a sailor. But I have just awakened from a dream that was worse than your Christian Hell."
CHAPTER XXIX
The Home Port
"The wind is from the south-southeast, sir," sang out Swanson from the wheel. Riley gave voice to my impulse when he said, "Thank God, it is the southeast trades again, sir."
The days that followed brought us fine weather and a gentle breeze. We were fortunate enough to escape the doldrums. The southeast trades carried us into the northeast trade winds. In latitude 30° north we struck the westerly winds that blow fair for the Pacific coast of the U. S. A. Fifty-six days from Suva we rounded Lime Point, sailed up Frisco Bay, and dropped the hook off Goat Island.
The owner welcomed me at his office, and was pleased indeed to know that his favorite schooner was once again in her home port.
Later, when we were towed alongside the wharf, the good ship "Wampa" was the object of much speculation among the old hard-shelled water-front men, not so much from her battered condition, although she was minus port bulwarks, foretopmast and flying jibboom, as from some air of mystery which in a conscious way seemed to emanate from the very hull of her. Veterans of the deep who were in port loading new cargoes, would come and go, walking in silence like pallbearers.
Possibly this was due to the appearance of the Hindoo stowaway, or it may have been that the occult voyage of the "Wampa" had been aired in Rooney's Steam Beer Joint which was at the end of the wharf. Yet with all this hushed solemnity, I do believe that it was I who most sincerely mourned our Captain and the two honest, simple sailormen whose lives had been so unprotestingly given to their duty. Many a voyage have I had since then, but at no time have I ever felt at once so near to Humanity, and to the Infinite. The Hindoo, who had picked up and grown fat on the cook's pea-soup and salt-horse, went to a home which I found for him with a hotel man, who advanced the entry-fee, and put him to work as a porter. He saved his money and, after familiarizing himself with the customs and conventions of the Western people, he moved north to the State of Oregon, where he went into the real estate business, acquiring, up to eight years ago, a goodly sum of money.
The Socialist cook exchanged his greasy dungarees for a pair of hand-me-down creaseless serge pants. With these and a much-worn broadcloth coat that had long withstood gales from the critics of equal distribution, he entered once more the harness of Socialism. With him he took Toby, the black cat, to a life ashore. I believe, though, that his voyage on the "Wampa" had changed his materialistic ideas.