An outdoor man might have thrilled with the scene, the sun, the fresh Spring-scent and all. But I was fresh from the asphalt and stone walls of New York, and I was broken-spirited, resigned to anything, elated over nothing, that fate might allot me. I merely looked over the water to the Wanderer to see if the promised launch was on its way.
“Sure enough, Mister, there comes a little gas-boat for you now,” exclaimed my cabman, pointing with his whip to a small launch that was coming away from the yacht’s stern. “You’ll be all right; your friends have seen you. Well, good luck to you, friend, and lots of it.”
“Thank you,” I said, “and the same to you.”
But I felt bitterly that there was little hope that his cheery wish would be realized for me.
As the launch drew nearer the dock I saw that a bareheaded and red-haired young man was in charge, and as it came quite near I saw that the young man’s mouth was opening and closing prodigiously, and from snatches of sound that drifted toward me above the noise of the engine, I heard that he was singing joyously at the top of a strained and thoroughly unmusical voice.
He drove the launch straight at the dock in a fashion that seemed to threaten inevitable collision, but at the crucial moment the engine suddenly was reversed, the rudder swung around, and the little craft came sidling alongside against the timber on which I was standing; the young man tossed a rope around a pile, and with a sudden spring he was on the dock beside me.
“You’re Mr. Gardner Pitt, if your baggage is marked right,” he said, though I had not seen the swift glance he had shot at the initials on my bags.
He stood on his tip-toes, blinking in the sun, and filled his lungs with a great draft of air.
“Gee! It’s some morning, ain’t it, Mr. Pitt? A-a-ah-ah!” he continued with ineffable satisfaction. “It certainly is one grand thing to be alive.”
I could not wholly subscribe to his sentiment at that time, but there was such an aura of wholesome good humor about the young man that I warmed toward him at once. He was probably twenty-three years old, short and boyish of build: his face was a mass of freckles; his eyes were very blue and merry; his nose very snubbed, his mouth large. He wore one of the most awful red ties that ever tortured the eyes of humanity, and the crime was aggravated by a pin containing a large yellow stone; but when he grinned it was apparent that he was one of those whom much is to be forgiven.