“Next May, if all goes well, I’ll take you and mamma on a voyage to New York and back. How’s that?”
“Hurray!” All disappointment was forgotten in the promise, and the boy alternately hugged his father and skipped around the room in joyful antics. “Won’t that be great! Hurray! Jingo! I must tell Joak. And in the Sarmania too! I can hardly wait until the winter’s over. Just think of it, mamma! To New York! Three thousand miles across the Atlantic!” His delight knew no bounds and seafaring ideals were, for the nonce, postponed.
On a brumal November day, the Sarmania was to sail on her first trip under the Sutton house-flag. Captain McKenzie had bidden his family an affectionate farewell early in the morning and had driven away in a cab with his white canvas sea bag and portmanteau on the “dicky.” Mother and son had watched the four-wheeler rattle down the road and had waved to the Captain peering for a last glance of home through the window. Partings are holy moments, fraught with memories and fears, and both watched the conveyance disappear from sight without speaking. “Mamma,” said Donald, when they entered the house again, “what do you say if we take a cab this afternoon and drive down to Renfrew and see the ship pass down the river. I’d like to see daddy’s ship going down to the sea.” The idea appealed to Mrs. McKenzie and she assented eagerly. “And mamma,” continued Donald, “I’d like to ask a favor and I hope you’ll grant it.”
“What is it, dear?”
“Let me go and get poor Joak McGlashan and take him with us. His papa is on the Sarmania too, and I’m sure it would be a great treat for him to see the ship.”
Mrs. McKenzie’s lips pursed and she was about to refuse gently, but something had softened her heart towards the undesirable Joak, and she gave permission. Donald grabbed his hat and coat and was off to thirty-seven M’Clure street.
Later in the day a cab plodded down to the grassy banks of the Clyde at Renfrew and the occupants got out. Joak had had a hair-cut and wore a collar—an adornment which chafed his neck and made him feel like a “bloomin’ toff.” In Mrs. McKenzie’s eyes, the youth, thus adorned, looked quite passable, and were it not for his “atrocious conversation,” she would have been impelled to invite Joak to tea on occasions. Joak’s dialect, however, barred him from the polite society of Maxwell Park, and Mrs. McKenzie felt that the restrictions could not be relaxed.
The party sat on a seat by a river-side path until Donald, who had been scanning the roily windings of the Clyde citywards, discerned three tall masts coming slowly around a bend. “Here she comes!” he cried.
Slowly and majestically the liner swung into view, with a paddle-wheeled tug straining at a stern hawser, and the boys scanned her over with appreciative delight. The Sarmania was, indeed, a queen among ships—a long, straight-stemmed, black-hulled dream of a vessel, flush-decked from stem to stern, with white painted rails, stanchions and life-boats in orderly array, and varnished teak deck-houses, whose brass-rimmed ports glittered in the cold November daylight. A lofty, black, red-banded funnel arose from a phalanx of ventilators amidships, and three tall pole masts, with square yards crossed on the fore, added to the appearance of a handsome ship.