Jordan's face showed his relief. "Well," he said, "you have got to take the month at sea. You start to-night, and can do what's wanted when you have the opportunity. There's another thing. We have arranged for a kind of inaugural banquet, and you'll have to straighten her up a little. I'll send you down some flowers and things."
Jimmy gazed at him in drowsy consternation. "If your guests expect anything fit to eat, you had better send the banquet too. Who in the name of wonder are you bringing here?"
"Eleanor—that is, Miss Wheelock. Austerly and his daughter. I believe Valentine invited them. Forster and Mrs. Forster, and old man Leeson too. You have got to brace up and face the thing."
"I'm going to sleep," said Jimmy, with a gesture of resignation. "You'll take these papers to the respective offices, and I may be able to talk sensibly during the afternoon. But what made you want to bring Eleanor and Mrs. Forster here?"
Jordan laughed, and laid his hand on his comrade's shoulder. "I'll tell you later; you're too sleepy now. In the meanwhile, I'll get round and fix things generally."
He went away in a few minutes, and Jimmy, dragging himself into the little room beneath the bridge, flung himself down in the skipper's berth, dressed as he was.
CHAPTER XIII
THE "SHASTA" GOES TO SEA
It was a still, clear evening when Jimmy stood at the Shasta's gangway waiting to receive his guests. She lay out in the Inlet, and he could see the two boats sliding across the smooth, green water with a measured splash of oars, while the voices of their occupants reached him faintly through the clatter of a C.P.R. liner's winches and the tolling of a locomotive bell ashore. A thin jet of steam simmered about the Shasta's rusty funnel, and she lay motionless on the glassy brine, with cracked and splintered decks, and what paint a long exposure to rain and sun had not removed peeling from her. Jimmy had had no time to spare for any attempt at decoration during the voyage down Puget Sound. Indeed, he and his engineer felt thankful they had succeeded in bringing her round at all.
By and by the first boat ran alongside, and, because she belonged to the Shasta, Jimmy was relieved to see that there was, after all, not a very great deal of water in her, though his guests sat with their feet drawn up. There were several of them: Jordan, who wore among other somewhat unusual garments a frock-coat, and was talking volubly; Eleanor, in elaborate white dress and a very big white hat; old Leeson, Forster and his wife. Jimmy helped them up with difficulty, for the Shasta was floating high and light and had not been provided with a passenger ladder. Something in his sister's face perplexed him when at last they stood on deck. Eleanor was quieter than usual, and when she looked at him there was a trace of color in her cheeks he could not quite account for.