“Yes. I am going out to the Rocky Mountains to fight Indians and grizzly bears and make myself famous. There’s plenty of fun and excitement to be found in that life, and I have always wanted to follow it.”
“If it is excitement you are after you had better go to sea. You’ll find it there, take my word for it. I don’t know anything about this hunting business, but you’ll need guns and traps, won’t you? And how are you going to get them with your locker empty?”
“Yes, I shall need at least three hundred dollars; but where it is to come from I don’t know. I must go to work and earn it somehow.”
“Did you ever follow any kind of business?”
“No; I have been to school all my life.”
“Well, you had better go a-sailoring with me. You can earn the money you want in that way. You see, I don’t run here on the lakes—I belong outside.”
“Outside?” repeated Guy.
“Yes, out on the ocean. I have sailed the blue water, man and boy, for thirty-five years, and if I live I expect to sail it thirty-five more. I left an old mother in Ohio when I went to sea—I ran away from her, like a fool as I was—and for twenty years I never heard from her. At last I found myself in Boston with a few hundreds in my pocket, and I thought I would go back to the old place, and, if my mother was still above hatches, the money I had saved would make her comfortable for the rest of her days. But I didn’t find her,” said Flint, while a sorrowful expression settled on his face—“never had a chance to tell her how sorry I was that I had treated her so, and that if she would forgive me and own me as her son once more I would try and make up for it. She had been under the sod ten years, and the old place was in the hands of strangers. Nobody knew me or ever heard of me. Of course I couldn’t stay there, and hearing that there was a schooner in Chicago loading for Liverpool, I went up and engaged a berth on her. Finding that she wasn’t ready to sail, I shipped as wheelsman in this tub to go one trip to Buffalo and back. The schooner will be off the ways and have her cargo aboard by the time we get there, and if you say the word maybe I can work you in as cabin-boy or something.”
“But you forget that I must leave this boat at Saginaw,” said Guy.
“No, I don’t. There’s more’n one way to get around that. Will you go? That’s what I want to know?”