RUTH. (piteously) Oh, Andy, I’ve a headache! I don’t want to talk! Leave me alone, won’t you please?
ANDREW. (stands staring at her for a moment—then walks away saying in a hurt tone): Everybody hereabouts seems to be on edge today. I begin to feel as if I’m not wanted around. (He stands near the path, left, kicking at the grass with the toe of his shoe. A moment later CAPTAIN DICK SCOTT enters, followed by ROBERT carrying MARY. The CAPTAIN seems scarcely to have changed at all from the jovial, booming person he was three years before. He wears a uniform similar to ANDREW’S. He is puffing and breathless from his climb and mops wildly at his perspiring countenance. ROBERT casts a quick glance at ANDREW, noticing the latter’s discomfited look, and then turns his eyes on RUTH who, at their approach, has moved so her back is toward them, her chin resting on her hands as she stares out seaward).
MARY. Mama! Mama! (ROBERT puts her down and she runs to her mother. RUTH turns and grabs her up in her arms with a sudden fierce tenderness, quickly turning away again from the others. During the following scene she keeps MARY in her arms).
SCOTT. (wheezily) Phew! I got great news for you, Andy. Let me get my wind first. Phew! God A’mighty, mountin’ this damned hill is worser’n goin’ aloft to the skys’l yard in a blow. I got to lay to a while. (He sits down on the grass, mopping his face).
ANDREW. I didn’t look for you this soon, Uncle.
SCOTT. I didn’t figger it, neither; but I run across a bit o’ news down to the Seamen’s Home made me ’bout ship and set all sail back here to find you.
ANDREW. (eagerly) What is it, Uncle?
SCOTT. Passin’ by the Home I thought I’d drop in an’ let ’em know I’d be lackin’ a mate next trip count o’ your leavin’. Their man in charge o’ the shippin’ asked after you ’special curious. “Do you think he’d consider a berth as Second on a steamer, Captain?” he asks. I was goin’ to say no when I thinks o’ you wantin’ to get back down south to the Plate agen; so I asks him: “What is she and where’s she bound?” “She’s the El Paso, a brand new tramp,” he says, “and she’s bound for Buenos Aires.”
ANDREW. (his eyes lighting up—excitedly) Gosh, that is luck! When does she sail?
SCOTT. Tomorrow mornin’. I didn’t know if you’d want to ship away agen so quick an’ I told him so. “Tell him I’ll hold the berth open for him until late this afternoon,” he says. So there you be, an’ you can make your own choice.