“Thank you kindly, sir,” I answered, “but I’m home now, once I get ashore.”
“Aye!” snorted the captain. “And in three days you’ll be on the beach and howling to sign on again. Turn to with the crew until she’s tied up in Tacoma, and I’ll give you your discharge.”
I told him plainly that I could not wait. I wanted to go ashore at once.
“Huh! That’s it!” growled the master. “Every man jack of you with the price of a drink coming to him is ready to desert if a shift of work turns up. Well, to-morrow is Sunday. I’ll get some money when I go ashore, and pay you off on Monday morning. But I’ll have to set you down on the records as a deserter.”
“Very good, sir,” I answered.
Fifty-seven days after boarding the Glenalvon I bade farewell to her crew. Dressed in a khaki uniform and an ancient pair of sea-boots that had cost me four messes of plum-duff, I landed with the captain at a rocky point on the farther side of the bay. He marched before me until we reached the door of a lonely tavern, then turned and dropped into my hand seven and a half dollars.
“You must be back on board by to-morrow night,” he said.
“Eh!” I gasped.
“Oh, I have to tell you that,” snapped the skipper, “or I can’t set you down as a deserter,” and, pushing aside the swinging doors before him, he disappeared.
I plodded on toward the city of Victoria. The joy of being on land once more—above all, of being my own master—was so keen that it was with difficulty that I kept myself from cutting a caper in the public street.