It is true enough that Captain Mayne Brace was only a simple sailor. But if his heart was kind and soft, it was also a brave one. Nor did he lack genuine business habits, and long before the Walrus reached the most northerly of the Shetland Islands, he had made up his mind as to what he should do.
He was returning a clean ship. As a clean ship he had to meet his owners. He knew what that would mean. There would be no banquets in his honour at the end of this voyage, as there had been last time when he returned to Hull a bumper ship, with thousands of tons of oil below, with bings of skins on deck even, and bergs of fresh-water ice heaped ’twixt main and fore, enough to gladden the eyes of every hotel-keeper in the City, and with a lovely young Polar bear as a gift to the Lady Mayoress. No wishing him further health and fortune, no men to carry him shoulder-high to the dining-hall. Sic transit gloria mundi when a Greenland captain returns a clean ship, to meet with cold looks and taunts and sneers.
Honest Mayne Brace was not sure that he could face all this, so he put boldly into Lerwick, and let go the anchor opposite this quaint old town.
Everybody wanted a rest anyhow. Ingomar himself was longing to stretch his legs on shore, and the boys to ride madly over the moors on untrained and untameable Shetland ponies.
I believe the brave Yak-Yak men, with their thirty beautiful but daft dogs, and Slap-dash, with his four bears, would have all gone on shore together if invited, and taken the town by storm.
But Brace himself, with the young millionaire, went on shore, and took immediate possession of the telegraph office.
Every one knew good Brace, and lifted his hat to him, and welcomed him back from the land of ice and snow, and would fain have stopped him to chat, but he went hurrying on.
The postmaster himself shook hands effusively, and to him Brace was obliged to talk for a few minutes.
“I want you, Mr. Bryan, to let myself and my young friend here, in your presence of course, wire for a short time. It is on secret business of the greatest importance, and you know, Bryan, I am an adept at working the wires.”
The postmaster was pleased, delighted, he said; and down sat Brace, Ingomar standing by and looking amused.