“Donal’!”
It was McKenzie’s school-boy chum—“Joak” McGlashan!
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Hae some o’ these beans, Donal’!” urged Joak, piling his old chum’s plate, “they’re good an’ fillin’ an’ I cooked them masel’ Boston fashion. Jist tae think we sh’d meet like this! (Here’s some broon bread.) It’s simply astonishin’! (There’s new-made dough-nuts.) Ah, canny get over it! (There’s apple pie an’ coffee—help yersel’.) Wonders’ll never cease!”
Donald hadn’t gotten over his surprise, and with a mouth full of the food which his chum was pressing upon him, he stared at McGlashan—a big strapping lad of eighteen, with a cook’s white apron around his waist. “How did you get out here, Joak?” he asked eventually.
“I came oot as a cook’s helper in a C.P.R. boat—a new ship what was built on the Clyde,” explained Joak. “Then I went cookin’ on tugs towin’ logs, and I made a trip to the coast o’ Japan an’ th’ Behring Sea on yin o’ they sealers. I’m anxious to get hame noo, so I took this job. An’ you, Donal’, hoo did you come tae hit th’ West Coast?”
Captain Nickerson and Thompson dropped down for breakfast. “Sailors meet old tillicums in all sorts of odd places,” remarked the former, when he heard of McKenzie and McGlashan. “It’s not surprising. I met my brother Asa aboard a barque in Antwerp one time. I was ’fore-the-mast and he was second mate, and I was kinder slow gettin’ along to man the windlass and he hustled me. When I looked around, it was brother Asa. ‘Where’n hell did you spring from, Jud?’ he says. I told him I had just shipped so’s to git home. ‘Waal,’ says he, ‘I’m headin’ for home also, but don’t you forget I’m second mate o’ this hooker. So slide along an’ put some beef on them windlass brakes or I’ll make you wish you’d never seen me!’” He chuckled over the recollection.
While eating breakfast, Donald had a chance to size up the Helen Starbuck’s company. In addition to McGlashan, who had shipped as cook, there were two able Scandinavians—Axel Hansen and Einar Olsen—quiet young fellows about thirty years of age with the heavy build of their breed—good muscle and beef for a tussle with wind and canvas. With six hands and the Captain, the Helen Starbuck was well manned.