We had gone a long way on our journey toward the Cape of Good Hope before our new carpenter had repaired the broken bulwark and the various other damages the ship had suffered, and before the rigging was thoroughly restored. Weeks passed, their monotony broken only by the sight of an occasional sail; days piled on end, morning and night, night and morning, until weeks had become months. In the fullness of time we rounded Good Hope, and now swiftly with fair winds, now slowly with foul, we worked up to the equator, then home across the North Atlantic.
On the afternoon of a bright day in the fall, more than a year after we first had set sail, we passed Baker Island and stood up Salem Harbor.
Bleak and bare though they were, the rough, rocky shores were home. To those of us who hailed from Salem, every roof and tree gave welcome after an absence of eighteen months. Already, we knew, reports of our approach would have spread far and wide. Probably a dozen good old captains, sweeping the sea, each with his glass on his "captain's walk," had sighted our topsails while we were hull down and had cried out that Joseph Whidden was home again. Such was the penetration of seafaring men in those good old days when they recognized a ship and its master while as yet they could spy nothing more than topgallantsails.
We could see the people gathering along the shore and lining the wharf and calling and cheering and waving hands. We thought of our comrades whom we had left in far seas; we longed and feared to ask a thousand questions about those at home, of whom we had thought so tenderly and so often.
Already boats were putting out to greet us; and now, in the foremost of them, one of the younger Websters stood up. "Mr. Hamlin, ahoy!" he called, seeing Roger on the quarter-deck. "Where is Captain Whidden?"
Roger did not answer until the boat had come fairly close under the rail, and meanwhile young Webster stood looking up at him as if more than half expecting bad news.
Only when the boat was so near that each could see the other's expression and hear every inflection of the other's voice, did Roger reply.
"He is dead."
"We heard a story," young Webster cried in great excitement, coming briskly aboard. "One Captain Craigie, brig Eve late from Bencoolen, brought it. An appalling tale of murder and mutiny. As he had it, the men mutinied against Mr. Thomas and against Mr. Falk when he assumed command. They seized the ship and killed Mr. Thomas and marooned Mr. Falk, who, while Captain Craigie was thereabouts, hustled a crew of fire-eating Malays and white adventurers and bought a dozen barrels of powder and set sail with a fleet of junks to retake the ship. But that, of course, is stuff and nonsense. Where's Falk?"
"Falk," said Roger with a wry smile, "decided to spend the rest of his days at the Straits."