“But it was many a day before he was likely to see Los Angeles again and so we told him.
V
“From the day we passed that freighter till the day we lifted Howland Island, which lies nor’-west of Nanuti, we only sighted three ships hull down and beyond signalling.
“After passing Howland we passed a brig bound for Java and a freighter from Rangoon bound for South American ports—Nothing for anywhere near ’Frisco.
“Billy like a good many landsmen seemed to fancy that ships were all over the sea close as plums in a pudding. He got to know different by the time we reached Nanuti and, more than that, he got to know that every ship wasn’t bound for ’Frisco.
“‘Why,’ he says one day, ‘if I’ve got to wait for a ship back,’ he says, ‘I’m thinking it’s an old man I’ll be before we sight one.’
“‘And you’re thinking right,’ says Buck. ‘You had your chance and you missed it because the sea was a bit rough and your head was stuffed with that blessed petticoat and the idea it was going to drown you. You’ll just have to stick to the old Greyhound till she fetches up again at Long Wharf and that’s God knows when, for we don’t run by time-table.’
“And that was the fact; we touched at Nanuti and discharged cargo and took on copra. Then we came along down by the New Hebrides and shaving New Caledonia put into Sydney and discharged and took a cargo along to Auckland, and then from North Island we took a cargo down for Dunedin. The only way to make money with ships is to know where to go for your cargoes. Buck had some sort of instinct that way and he was backed with friends in the shipping trade, but it wasn’t for eight months from starting that he got the chance of a cargo to ’Frisco, and it wasn’t till two months later that we passed the whistling buoy and saw the tumble of the bar.
“I looked at Billy that morning and I thought to myself that it was worth it to him. He looked twice the man he was when he fetched on board and, more than that, he could handle sails and steer and take an observation as good as me or Buck, besides which Buck had treated him well about payment and he’d have a good few dollars waiting for him when we tied up at the wharf.
“Which was that day. I’d business which kept me running about all the day after and it wasn’t till the day after that Billy took heart and come to me and asked me to go with him to Los Angeles so’s to break him to his wife, so to speak.