“Ye know, son, I didn’t know you were Alec McKenzie’s boy until that night after you rove the main truck flag halliard when you told me your story. I told you a while back that I knew your dad, and that he did me a good turn. He was skipper of the Ansonia at the time, and I came out to New York in her as quartermaster. I got ashore in the Big Burg and went out on a drunk, and returned to the ship just before sailing day with only what I stood up in—having sold my shore-clothes and overcoat for rum. When I got aboard there was a letter awaiting me from my father saying that mother was very ill and for me to come home at once. I hadn’t a cent, but when I went to the skipper—your father—and told him the circumstances, he gave me a hell of a raking over and loaned me fifty dollars to get home.... I’m ashamed to admit, Donald, that I never paid it back. I was pretty wild in those days.... I always intended to pay him the money, but I never had it. Fifty dollars was a mate’s monthly wages in those days an’ not easily picked up. However, I’ll square it up with you when we get to Halifax, for it’s always bin on my mind. It was darn decent of him to do what he did for a blame’ quarter-master, but Alec McKenzie was famous for his open-handedness. So that’s how I came to be under obligations to your daddy.” He chatted for a little while and went aft—leaving Donald with yet another incident of the strange manner in which sailormen from the ends of the earth get acquainted with each other.
The North-east Trades flickered out in fitful breezes and thunderstorms, and they ran out of the pleasant “flying-fish weather” into the calms and the cats-paws of the “Doldrums.” In the light airs the Helen Starbuck seemed to ghost along as though she had an engine in her, and Captain Nickerson saw to it that all sail was trimmed to take advantage of every puff. They sighted several square-riggers lying becalmed and Thompson chuckled when he saw them swinging their yards to the flickering zephyrs. “Look at that pound an’ pint limey off to starb’d,” he would say. “Aren’t you thankful you’re not aboard that blighter now? There’s a puff! It’ll be ‘Lee-fore-brace, you hounds!’ There they go wind-milling. Jupiter! who would want to go to sea in one of them after being in a fore-and-after like this?”
One morning they drifted close to a big full-rigged ship with painted ports, bound south. She was the Phalerope of Liverpool from San Francisco with grain to Falmouth for orders, and her master hailed the schooner.
“What ship? Where bound?”
“Helen Starbuck—Victoria to Halifax, Nova Scotia!” bawled Captain Nickerson.
“Come aboard an’ have a yarn, captain!” came the invitation.
Nickerson grinned. “Sorry—can’t stop!” he hailed. “I’ll report you in Monte Video. So long!”
They glided past the towering ship, and Thompson yelled to the men peering over the for’ard rail. “What’s the matter—anchor down?”
“G’wan you sliver!” returned a voice. “’Ow did you git aht ’ere? Wos you blowed off?”