"But take Zulee with you, home to your home, and your sister shall be Zulee's sister."
"Well," said Kep, returning her innocent embrace, "I must leave Zulee and come back for her some day--perhaps."
Kep was really burning to get away to sea in some capacity or another, so promising to return and bid his new friends all adieu, as soon as he had got a ship, our Kep journeyed back once more to Jamaica.
He had spent such a happy time, and they had been so good to him--but then everybody was.
"Heigho!" the boy sighed. "Heaven must be such a nice place, just because when you do make friends you keep them, and there are no more cruel partings."
Kep found apartments in a tiny cactus-surrounded cottage, not far from the busy parts of the city, yet cool and quiet--a little oasis in a somewhat objectionable desert.
He counted his cash again, and found to his surprise that it could not last for ever.
He must find work, and that work must be on board some sailing ship or steamer.
Now, strangely enough, he did not find this so easy to do as he had imagined. No one appeared to want a really talented boy on board ship, and his repeated rebuffs began to tell on him. He grew just a trifle less buoyant and hopeful.
How different were the shippy parts of the city into which trading skippers dived here in search of wretched crews from those of his own dear England.