It was a poor lot of truck that his Uncle David was purchasing for him, and the Captain evidently had instructions to keep the cost down to a certain figure. A mattress—a common jute bag stuffed with straw—and a blanket of thin shoddy came first. Then Donald was measured for a cheap blue serge uniform. A peaked uniform cap, with the “Dun Line” house-flag on the badge; a suit of two-piece oilskins, a pair of leather sea-boots, a sou’wester, two suits of dungarees, two woollen jerseys, some underwear and socks, towels, soap, matches, knife, fork, spoon, an enamel mug and a deep plate practically completed the outfit which was hove into a cheap pine chest with rope handles. The Jew salesman threw in a belt and a sheath-knife “as a present,” and the Captain said to Donald, “Ye’ve got a rig there fit to go ’round the Horn, mister, and a sight better’n I had when I first went to sea!”
The cheap junk which constituted an outfit and which was packed in Donald’s chest, appeared quite all right to him and he was delighted with every article. He longed for the day when he could don the brass-buttoned blue suit and wear the badged cap of an apprentice seaman. He pictured himself swaggering ashore in foreign ports, with the cap set back on his head—in the manner approved of by ’prentices—and with the chin strap over the crown. “Ye’ll get yer suit in two days, sir!” said the tailor. “Will you call, or will I send your kit?” As Donald wasn’t sure if he would be in the city, he said that he would call.
Before taking a train for home, he asked some questions of the uncommunicative Captain Muirhead, and found out that the Kelvinhaugh was a brand-new four-mast barque of about 2,500 tons, and that she was loading railroad iron for Vancouver—a long round-the-Horn voyage. They would probably get a homeward cargo of grain from the West Coast, and then again they might charter to load lumber at Vancouver for Australia or South Africa—the Captain couldn’t say. Vancouver! Australia! South Africa! thought Donald. What names to conjure with! How he would roll them off his tongue—easily and nonchalantly, as a sailor would. “Aye, I’m sailing to-morrow. ’Round the Horn to Vancouver, and then across the Pacific to Australia maybe. Be back in a year or eighteen months. So long!” As the train sped home, he sat in a corner of the third-class compartment and thought of the wonder and romance of it all. Running down the “Trades”; crossing the “Line” and doubling the stormy, storied Horn! That was the life for a red-blooded boy! And some of those future days he pictured himself pacing a liner’s bridge—monarch of all he surveyed—and saying, as he had heard his father say: “My ship did this!” or “My ship carried them!” Oh, it was fine castle building, and he actually blessed his uncle for the chance he had given him and forgave his bitter words and brutal mannerisms.
Mrs. McKenzie did not share his enthusiasm. His jubilation at getting away to sea; his description of the ship, the voyage, his uniform and prospects for the future were like salt on an open wound, and she would listen mechanically to his chatter, but her mind was far away and her heart was full of bitterness. She would be alone—frightfully alone—and she would be afraid. Donald, her baby boy, out at sea in that ship with rough men and living a rough life! She had heard her husband talk of his sailing-ship days and she remembered his worst experiences.
Could Donald stand such a life? She was afraid, and she felt that her boy was going on a journey the outcome of which she was unable to forecast.
Sailing day came on winged feet and mother and son journeyed to Glasgow on the Sunday morning. They strolled through the Kelvingrove Park on the bright Sabbath afternoon, just as they used to stroll when Captain McKenzie was home and they were all together, and the recollection of those happy days made the mother feel that life was dealing harshly with her. But, whatever her feelings were, she hid them for Donald’s sake and under a smiling mask concealed the anguish which was gnawing at her heart. What a brave little chap he looked in his badged cap and brass-buttoned uniform! There was a flush on his cheek and a glow in his eyes that she had never seen before. Aye! the magic of the great waters was calling to one bewitched and whose sole acquaintance with the sea was in the sight of the ships, the talk of sailormen, and through the Viking strain in the British blood!
They had tea together and went to church in the evening. Strangely enough the preacher chose as his text, “The Sea is His!” and his discourse went direct to the mother’s heart. In all that great church there was only one to whom his slowly intoned words had a significant meaning. “The Sea is His! He made it!” the preacher said—his utterance rich with homely Doric. “Never the man born of woman throughout the ages of earth could arrest its tides or command its resistless waves. Ships traverse its wastes, but make their voyagings only through His sufferance—a momentary loosing of His hurricanes and they could be blotted out as utterly as though they never existed. It is irresistible in its fearful power, and in a mere minute of time the most marvellously wonderful, and the mightiest creations of our human handiwork can be swept into utter oblivion, with never a trace of where stone stood upon stone, or iron riveted to iron. It can be neither pathed or bridged, harnessed or commanded, and all the skill and ingenuity of man has failed, and will ever fail, to share with God the proud boast that the sea is subject to any bidding but His. Only He who walked on Galilee could order, ‘Peace! be still!’ and have His mandate obeyed. The sea is His, my brethren, and those who traverse verse its unmarked paths would do well to sail with God in their hearts, for it is only God who can save and protect them in their journeyings o’er its vast and restless expanse!”
The congregation knew the truth of the preacher’s words. They were ship-builders, many of them, and they wrought in the yards that made the old Clyde-side city famous. They knew what the sea called for in the structures which they framed and plated and rigged; they knew what the sea could do to iron and steel stanchion, frame, beam and plate. Many a twisted wreck had come to their hands to be straightened, untwisted, flattened out and replaced. “Goad, aye! we ken its handiwork!” they muttered. In their cold Scotch perception, this was the manner in which they comprehended the power of Him who calmed Galilee.