Mrs. McKenzie’s letter was a long one and it bubbled over with news. “You are a regular hero here,” she wrote, “and I have a bone to pick with you for not telling me about your swimming ashore through the surf and saving all those people. I am both proud and vexed with you, but I think my pride will overcome any vexation I may have at your failure to tell me more about the wreck and what you did. Everybody is talking about you, and, oh, sonny, but I’m proud. To-day, a cablegram came addressed to you from your friend Mr. McGlashan in Glasgow. I opened it and it runs: Remain in Eastville. Will arrive Halifax July fifteenth. Very important. McGlashan. I suppose you know what it is about. I saw Ruth Nickerson this morning. She was quite ill after the wreck and doesn’t look very well yet.”
He folded the letter up and placed it in his pocket for a second perusal later, but one item in it seemed to run in his mind. “Ruth ... ill?” he murmured, and slowly and deliberately, he reached into his pocket and took out her letter. For a space he gazed at the familiar handwriting on the envelope, then he broke it open and took out a sheet of pale pink paper folded in half, and with a firm-set mouth and cold eyes, he straightened it out. For a moment, the writing danced before his eyes, with the excited blood pounding from heart to brain, then his self-possession returned and he read the two or three lines which it contained.
Donald:—
If you can forgive me, and trust me to renew your faith in women—ask me again.
Ruth.
The grim look faded from his face and gave place to one of perplexed astonishment. Scarcely believing he had read the note aright, he perused it a second time—reading the words out aloud. “If you can forgive me ... and trust me ... ask me again!” And he stared at the little pink sheet—now trembling in his hand with the agitation of conflicting feelings—and murmured, “Ask me again!”
With a joyful cry he jumped to his feet—his dark eyes sparkling with a gladness which scarcely knew expression—and he stepped under the sky-light and re-read the letter for the third time. “Whoop-ee!” he cried in excess of new-found delight. “Will I forgive her? Why, she never did anything wrong! It must have been a mistake—all a mistake—for she’s the dearest, sweetest, darlingest girl in the world!”
A tousled, sun-burned face peered down the cabin companionway, and a hoarse voice enquired, “Did I hear ye sing aout, Skipper?” Donald wheeled and laughed confusedly. “No, Anson, I didn’t sing out, but if you’re all ready to slip, get the stops off the sails and we’ll slide right away for home. Everybody aboard? Cook get his water tanks filled? Good boy! Then we’ll get under way!” And when Anson vanished, he kissed the little pink note, folded it carefully, and slipped it into the breast pocket of his shirt. Within thirty minutes the Amy Anderson, with the Canadian ensign flying from the main-gaff, and the four lowers on her, was slipping out of San Juan harbor to the urge of the steady north-east trade.
Running out to the nor’ad, the green hills of the Island soon changed into the blue of distance as they left it astern. McKenzie paced the weather quarter with his brain in a whirl of exhilaration and the tinkling bell of the patent log recording the knots sounded gloriously in his ears as evidence of the ever-shortening distance between him and the girl he loved. He trod the deck with a strange springiness, and when he scanned the bubbling broil of the wake astern, he could not restrain a joyous chuckle and an encouraging word to the man at the wheel, “Sock it to her, Billy old son! She’s travelling home and the girls have got hold of the tow-rope! Give her a good full and let ’er slide!”
He paced the deck for an hour, then he had to go below and read those magical words once more to make sure that his eyes were not deceiving him.
No, by Jupiter! There it was—plain as a hand-spike in her own dear hand-writing. “Ask me again.” Would he ask her again? Why, the Amy Anderson couldn’t travel fast enough to give him the opportunity! In his excitement, he paced the narrow cabin, staggering and swaying with the rolling of the vessel, and murmuring to himself, “Ask me again!”
He suddenly remembered Judson’s letter and opened it quickly. Stretching out on the locker, he composed himself to read it. Good old Juddy! What did he have to say, the old bucko! “Dear Don,” it ran. “Congratulate me! I’m the happiest man in the world, old timer. Helena has said the word and we’re going to sail dory-mates just as soon as the Devil-dodger makes a long splice of it. I’m waiting for her to name the day, then, old son, you can polish up your gaff-topsail hat and overhaul your square-mainsail coat and stand beside your old skipper and see everything all clear for my getting under way on a new voyage. If it wasn’t for Eben Westhaver’s old packet bumping the ledges, I reckon I’d still be guessing, but I’ve no hard feelings against that sorry old coaster now. And, bye the bye, Don, you pulled out in a hell of a hurry that night. You seemed to think it was of more importance to get Cal Heneker’s old scow to Porto Reek than it was to see all us shipwrecked folks ashore. However, the town will have a band playing for you when you get home. The Ladies’ Aid of the Church and the Young People’s Society are both squabbling among themselves as to how they’ll honor you, while Tom Daley, the Mayor, is prating to the Council about recognizing Eastville’s esteemed citizen, Captain Donald McKenzie, with something worthy of your plucky work that night. They’ve petitioned the Royal Humane, the Government and Lloyd’s to honor you, and I tell you, son, they had scare-heads in the Halifax papers about ‘the thrilling rescue.’ But enough of that. You are going to get no more soft-soap from me on that subject. My sister Ruth was quite sick after the affair, but she’s chased that nut Moodey back to where he belongs. On the steamer that night she asked him to swim ashore with a line—he’s bragged a whale of a lot about his swimming abilities to her—but he got a sudden attack of Cape Horn fever and balked at the job. I always said that joker had a yellow streak in him somewhere, and that was where he showed it. If he wasn’t such an able swimmer and such a mouth about it, I wouldn’t have felt so mad about the blighter. But, believe me, Don, I gave him an earful when we got ashore that night. It took me a while to square myself with the girls for the language which they said I used towards him. Now, you know, Donny-my-lad, that I’d only express my feelings in good old sailor fashion, but shore-folks don’t understand our particular lingo, though I’ll bet Moodey did. Now, old shippy, I’m going out again in the morning, but I’ll look for you in September, and you can bet my bullies will hump some this time. We’ll spin ’em out when the gulls can’t fly to wind’ard, and I plan to wet a pile of salt and bait small and catch ’em large from now out.” When he finished reading, McKenzie chuckled happily.