When our hero and his friend made their appearance on deck they found Mr Weston (now shaven and shorn, and clad in a suit of true nautical cut, the property of Mr Weatherhelm) standing near the skylight talking to the skipper and Mr Rogerson, the chief mate of the Surat Castle.
“Halloa!” he exclaimed, catching sight of his son’s head-gear. “I ought to know that cap.”
“It is the Rugby school-house cap,” said its owner with conscious pride. “We have only lately worn them; but I’ve heard old school-house men say that they were introduced years ago—long before Arnold’s time—but dropped out after a while.”
“That’s quite right,” rejoined Mr Weston. “I am an old Rugby boy myself, and well remember the school-house badge being introduced. It must be nearly five-and-thirty years ago,” he added with a sigh, “when I was about little Grade’s age.”
“Why!” Tom cried, his interest in the family increasing fourfold, “you must have been at Rugby with my father! Flinders is his name—Major—”
“Not dear old Matthew Flinders surely?” interrupted the other, “who afterwards went into the Cape Rifles?”
“The same,” answered Tom, nodding his head. “Did you know him?”
“Know Mat Flinders! Why, my dear boy, your father was the best and truest friend I ever had! But it is many, many years since we met. You must tell me all about him.”
Tom was delighted at this discovery, and he there and then proceeded to give Weston a full account of his father’s doings, and of their farm near Cape Town; in the midst of which he was interrupted by the steward announcing that “tiffin was on the table.”
“Well,” said the boy as they entered the saloon together, “they say the world is very small, and that one tumbles against friends and connections in all manner of queer places; but I should never have dreamed of meeting an old school-house man, a chum of the pater’s, on a desolate island in the South Atlantic Ocean.”