“It won’t take the boat long to get me ashore,” he said. “I’m going by train from Rockford, not all the way by sea to Boston. Well, good-bye, Captain Saulsby; I—I—I can’t—good-bye.”
He had meant to thank the old sailor for his many kindnesses, words that seemed simple enough to speak; but in the end he said nothing, merely turned away and walked down through the willow trees, never looking back. He bade farewell to his aunt on the pier, embarked upon the waiting steamer and headed away toward the shore, toward the West, toward all the things he knew. Yet he stood on deck and looked back as long as he could see toward Appledore Island, until Captain Saulsby’s red-roofed cottage had vanished, until points and headlands disappeared and the green hills sank and became smaller and smaller on the horizon.
The winds rose, the boat rolled a trifle, but still did not disturb his steady watching. He thought of the friends he had made there, of the adventures he had been through, of the dangers that still hung about the place.
“Will I ever see it again?” he wondered, over and over. This was still the burden of his thoughts when the boat rounded the point into Rockford harbour and Appledore Island vanished from his sight. Yet he still seemed to hear it calling, even after his straining eyes could see it no longer.
CHAPTER X
THREE QUARTERS OF A YEAR
Billy went back to school and saw the following months of work and play go by in a dizzy procession of speeding days. Thanksgiving and Christmas seemed to stop a little longer than the others; he spent the one at a town on one of the Great Lakes, ice-boating, and the other in Chicago, where he had some cousins. They were pleasant days and weeks and months; yet he saw them go by with some satisfaction, for he looked forward greatly to the time when his father and mother would come home.
The Easter vacation approached and, on account of some alterations to the school buildings, was made much longer than usual. Billy, however, could get little satisfaction out of even such unexpected good fortune, for letters from South America had been becoming more and more doubtful as to the chance of an early return, and one, arriving the morning the holidays began, settled the matter finally.
“Business moves too slowly in these Spanish-American countries,” his father wrote, “and what you think you can do in one day always takes you two or three. Therefore plans for one year are almost bound to stretch into two, so do not be disappointed, son, if we do not come back until autumn.”
Billy put down the letter when he had read so far and sat staring at the opposite wall. It seemed too hard to endure after he had waited patiently for so long. He picked up the page and read on.