“If you mean strength and activity, and the love of hard work, yes. Now see, for example. Any other boy would have come home by train, and lots of ’em would have traveled in the smoker, with a pack of cigarettes and a magazine. Does Hal come home that way? He does not! He writes me he’s going to work his way up on a schooner, out of Boston, for experience. That’s why I’m keeping my glass on the harbor. He told me the name of the schooner. It’s the Sylvia Fletcher. The minute she sticks her jib round Truxbury Light, I’ll catch her.”
“Sylvia Fletcher?” asked the doctor. “That’s an odd coincidence, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“Why, just look at those initials, captain. Sylvia Fletcher—S.F.”
“Well, what about ’em?”
“Silver Fleece. That was S.F., too.”
The captain turned puzzled eyes on his guest. He passed a hand over his white hair, and pondered a second or two. Then said he:
“That is odd, doctor, but what about it? There must be hundreds of vessels afloat, with those initials.”
“By all means. Of course it can’t mean anything. As you say, S.F. must be common enough initials among ships. So then, Hal’s amphibious already, is he? What’s he going to be? A captain like yourself?”
“I’d like him to be. I don’t hardly think so, though,” Briggs answered, a little distraught. Something had singularly disturbed him. Now and then he cast an uneasy glance at the withered little man in the chair beside him.