He neither rose from his seat or made any offer to shake hands. Mrs. McKenzie hesitated for a moment at the door of the room, but David was absorbed in some letters and did not look up. “Thank you! Good day!” she said dully, and Donald echoed, “Good day, sir!” He took no notice, but when they left, he jumped up and locked his office door and sat for a long time staring out of the grimy window—oblivious to respectful taps on the closed panels. From a scrutiny of the grey sky, he turned and stared fixedly at a small photograph on his desk—a picture of a young boy—and the stern look faded from his face. It was his own son. For a minute he gazed on the picture with eyes in which a strange light of almost idolatrous affection glowed, then he turned and picked up Mrs. McKenzie’s card and the bitter, sneering expression returned as he murmured, “Aye! I’ll look after her brat!”
The McKenzies were out on the street again when Donald clasped his mother’s hand. “The old beast!” he said. “How I hate him!” The mother made no answer. She had only been with David for five or ten minutes, but in that time he had wounded her to the soul and she felt that all that he said was true.
They went home and tried to forget the memory of that hateful interview, but a week later came a letter from David McKenzie.
“Dear Madam:”—it ran—“I have considered your case carefully. I will give your boy the benefit of a free apprenticeship on a new vessel which will be ready for sea in a month or two. For yourself, I am enclosing a letter to the manager of the Ross Bay Hydropathic, Ross Bay, Ayrshire, and if you will present this to him on May 1st, he will give you a position there as assistant matron. Yours truly, David McKenzie.” There was a postscript which ran:—“I will advise you when your boy should report here at my office. I will provide him with the outfit necessary. D. McK.”
Janet read the curt offer and for a moment she stared into space. “Donald to go to sea! The sea that had torn her husband—his father—ruthlessly from her! And poor Joak’s father too! The sea that yearly made widows of so many Glasgow wives....” She remembered her dead husband’s words, “The sea would kill you, laddie ... and it’s a dog’s life at the best of times!” She threw the letter down on the table. No! she wouldn’t accept David’s offer. It was the cruelest blow he had yet dealt her. She would manage somehow, but she’d keep Donald by her.
“What does he say, mamma?” Donald picked up the letter and read it. The mother stared at him as he read and she noticed the look in his eyes with an unknown fear gripping her heart. Ere he had laid the missive down she knew what was in his mind.
“Mother, dear,” he said, slipping his arm around her neck, “I want to go!”
For a moment she remained silent and her mind ran back to a day two years ago. McLeish, mate of the Sarmania was talking. “It was a terrifyin’ sea, that yin, madam ... and when I pickit masel’ up ... I found tha whole bridge and wheelhouse gone ... and worst of all, madam, yer husband was gone! Aye, him an’ th’ second mate, an’ th’ quarter-master, the bos’n an’ fower men ... an’ fower sae badly mashed up that I doot if they’ll leeve! And that’s all there is tae tell, madam!” She shuddered at the horrible memory of it. The frightful wall of grey-green sea rising up, curling and roaring. The terrible crash as it engulfed the ship, and the bare wet decks, twisted iron work and debris which remained. The others—the human victims—were carried away in the maw of the monster—whipped from life into death with a suddenness which was staggering. “No! no! no!” she cried, clasping her son to her in a frenzy of fear. “You shan’t go! He shan’t send you!” But in spite of her objections, she knew that the irresistible lure of the sea would take her son from her and that the ties of love and home were powerless against the magic of its adventure and romance.