Leave her, Johnny, leave her!
And now on shore we’ll have some fun,
And it’s time for us to leave her!”
Roaring this nautical valediction, they belayed and coiled down, and when Martin had said, “That’ll do, men!” they tumbled their dunnage over the rail and hied along to Pete Larsen’s Place or Two Bit Peter’s Sailors’ Boarding House and Nautical Emporium—glad to get away from the “bloody starvation Scotch work-house” which they called the Kelvinhaugh. Aye! in a week or two, in all probability, they would be outward-bound again in something as bad, and the much-anathematized Kelvinhaugh would be glorified in “my last ship” reminiscences.
Donald and Jenkins worked from six to five painting and doing odd jobs, under the orders of Thompson and Captain Muirhead—the mystery of whose reinstatement had not yet been cleared up. He was not the same man, however, and he spoke quite kindly to Donald on several occasions, and even gave him a dollar with which to see the sights. A dollar did not go far on the West Coast in those hectic days, with prices enhanced by the gold-seekers’ demands, but Jenkins had received something from home, and he generously “stood on his hands” and shared with the others.
A great packet of letters from his mother made Donald happy. She was well and getting along all right in the Hydropathic and had no complaints, though she was lonesome for her darling boy. These motherly missives usually contained many warnings about sleeping in damp bed clothes, sitting in draughts, and the danger of wearing wet socks. There was also much well-meant advice about the dire results of “overloading his stomach,” and requests not to “eat too much rich food.” Donald smiled grimly when he read these paragraphs. God knows there was no danger of overloading his stomach on any “rich” food in a starvation Scotch barque! Pea soup, hard biscuit, salt beef and pork, occasional potatoes and “duff,” tea and coffee (water bewitched), constituted the bulk of the “rich food” he had lived on, and there wasn’t too much of it at any time, and latterly, he had tautened his belt on the meagre feed to delude his imagination into the belief that his stomach was full!
Thompson—a four-years’ voyager—received similar reminders from home. “The dear old mater thinks I should wear goloshes and an umbrella on deck when it is raining,” he said with a laugh. “What mothers don’t know won’t hurt them.”
With Captain Muirhead’s dollar, Donald wrote several letters home and got his photograph taken standing alongside one of the giant cedars in Stanley Park. The photo cost him “four bits,” or fifty cents, but he thought it would be the best thing he could send, and cheerfully spent the money.
The Kelvinhaugh’s cargo had been nearly all cleared out of her, when a boy delivered a note to “Mr. Donald McKenzie.” It was from Nickerson, and it requested him, briefly, to meet him ashore at a certain corner at seven o’clock, and not to say anything to the others about it. Donald cleaned up, and slipped away from Jenkins and Thompson by saying he was “going up street to post a letter.”
Captain Nickerson, looking prosperous and smoking a cigar, met him at the appointed time and they went to a Chinese cafe and ordered something to eat. “Now, Donald,” said the other—it was the first time he had ever addressed him thus—“what do you plan to do? Are you going to stick by the ship?”