"You mean that I--"
"Of course you can go along. Who has more interest in establishing the fact than you?"
CHAPTER XIV
THE BOATSWAIN'S STORY
A seafaring man is less at home in a parlor than anywhere else. He can sit comfortably on anything except a chair. The big boatswain balanced himself gingerly on the edge of the biggest and strongest chair in the private parlor of the Maynard apartment in the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. In his hands, fortunately, for otherwise he would not have known what to do with them, he clasped a large package wrapped in oil silk and carefully tied up. He looked and felt supremely ill at ease and miserable. Back of him, equally uncomfortable, were the other survivors of the Susquehanna. It was proper for the boatswain, who acted as third officer, to be seated. This much was conceded to his rank, but Templin and the other five, deaf to all suggestions looking toward their comfort, remained standing. They did not even lean against anything. They took position in true seamanlike fashion, arms folded or akimbo, feet wide apart, ready for any unexpected roll on the part of the St. Francis Hotel.
George Harnash had met the steamer. Indeed, he had boarded her before she tied up at her berth at the docks. He knew that Beekman would not be with the survivors because their names had been cabled to New York by Smithfield in answer to inquiries. The strangest circumstance was this. A list of the other members of the crew taken from the ship's papers which were in possession of the third officer, for so the boatswain was designated, had also been cabled and the name of Beekman did not appear in that list either. This puzzled Harnash beyond measure. He had delivered Beekman to the crimp and the gang designated by Woywod, certainly. Had anything happened? Were those knock-out drops too strong? Harnash was a miserable man, indeed, a prey to all sorts of fears and anxieties and each worse than the other.
The men, who had landed at Honolulu in a dilapidated condition, two weeks' cruising in an open boat being not conducive to the preservation of wearing apparel, had been thoroughly outfitted by the agent of the Inter-Oceanic Trading Company, and consequently as Stephanie Maynard looked upon them she thought them as fine an appearing body of sailors as she had seen in her various voyagings upon the seas. Old John Maynard, keenly appraising them as they were led in the room, arrived at the same conclusion by a somewhat different process.
"This is the bo's'n of the Susquehanna," began Harnash after he had mustered and marshaled the uneasy sailors. "That is, he was originally shipped as bo's'n, but he has been promoted to third officer. How or why I do not yet know. I thought it best not to question the men until I had brought them here. Mr. Gersey--"
"Jim Gersey, at your service, sirs an' ma'am," said the old seaman, rising and making a sort of sea-scrape with his feet while he knuckled his brow with his hand in true if now somewhat obsolete sailor fashion.
"Mr. Gersey," said Harnash, "this is Mr. John Maynard, president of the company which owned the Susquehanna, and this is his daughter."