The two sat down as if under the same impulse, and there, in the cabin alone, Kep told the doctor all his strange story from beginning to end and all his longings as a boy and ambitions as well.
McTavish was silent for a time. He was thinking out the whole situation. Then his duty seeming to stand out before him clearly and distinctly, he stood up. "Keppel," he said, "don't you think you had better tell the Captain all this? I do not wonder now that you thought fit to conceal your name from us. You believed you were doing right; so, I think, you were. You were acting honourably in hiding from the world that you were the only son of Iverach Drummond, of Martello Castle, because he was moving in the highest society and you were--well, cleaning knives and boots. But now all that is altered. You have by your energy and grit attained to a honourable position as interpreter to a King's ship, while on the other hand your father is now living under a cloud--for a time. Let us hope it is only for a time, Keppel. But now you are going to let me introduce you to the ward-room and gun-room officers as the blue-blooded boy, we have all of us, always, believed you to be. But first and foremost let us see Captain Breezy, than which a better fellow never lived."
The Captain was in his own quarters, when, passing the sentry, McTavish knocked and entered.
Very much interested indeed was he, when Kep briefly retold his story.
To their astonishment the Captain got slowly up from his chair, and took a Yorkshire weekly newspaper from his pile. Then he touched a button and Adolph himself entered.
"I am not to be disturbed," he said, "until I ring again. That is all."
And Adolph retired.
"An article in this paper caught my eye, strange to say, only a few minutes ago, but I hardly glanced at it. I think I can now read it to you with some degree of interest. It is called
"A SECRET OF THE SEA.
"A story was current three or four years ago concerning the mate of a clipper-built Australian barque or ship, who, on his return home about three years ago, boasted of the possession of a large nugget or rather bar of gold. The story he told about it was that being sent on shore one day to bring off some fruit from an uninhabited island in the South Seas he picked up this lump of gold, which it was evident had lain in the water for a period of many years.