Jake made a tremendous effort. He would speak! “No, captain,” he said, “I owed it to you before! Ever since the night you took me into your watch. I did not know I had a soul, before that, or that anybody cared for it if I had, but when I found you did, I believed Another might. I’ve lived for you ever since, and have tried to live a little for Him, if He’d accept it, and I’d have died for you any day. If I do now, it’s all right, and more than I ever thought He’d grant me. It’s only shipping for another voyage, as you say, and if he takes me safe to port, you’ll follow.”
When the morning sun rose over a calm blue sea, Jake’s voyage was ended, and the Divine hand he had reached out to grasp, in the loneliness of his comfortless bunk, that night so long ago, had steered him safely home!
CHAPTER XXIX.
At the moment Carter was listening to the few words Jake could summon strength to utter, Thorndyke sat in a little office Aleck had enclosed for him at one side of the store, where he could slip away for a little rest now and then without really leaving his new responsibilities, and once more Tom and his fortunes came uppermost in his thoughts.
“I wonder what has become of Haggarty,” he was saying to himself. “I can’t remember when he has been in here. And he didn’t look right, the last time he came. There was a while he seemed quite himself again, but he went down lower than ever before long. I wish I could find out what is going wrong with him. It can’t be anything at the store, for Hal’s making a trip abroad for the firm, and wont be back for another month, and I know the senior partners think well of Tom. Indeed, I suppose he’ll go in himself before long, and yet something is certainly dragging on him. He looks worried and keeps out of the way. I’ve a great mind to go up to the house and see if I can get hold of him.”
Thorndyke got up from his easy chair, a very different affair from the piece of workmanship old Enoch had been so proud of years ago, and went out into the darkness.
“So tired to-day,” was the entry he had made that morning in his pocket journal, the only visible friend that ever heard a word about the pain, or how the battle went; only the great Captain himself heard the rest. “So tired to-day! Should give out utterly if I could leave the store.” But he wanted to find Tom! It was a long walk from the store, but that did not signify; he could rest when he reached there.
No, Tom was not at home and no one could tell him where he might be found. So he turned and retraced his steps—it is a great thing to be used to being tired! It was after midnight when Tom passed Halliday’s and took the same way Thorndyke had gone so wearily over a few hours ago.