“Say no more! say no more!” exclaimed Mr. Jukes, jamming on his hat. “Come, Tom. As for you, Ready, I wash my hands of you. I’ve no desire to interfere with your prospects on the line. You retain your job, but expect no favors from me. You must work out your own salvation.”
“That is just what I want to do, sir,” was Jack’s quiet rejoinder, as Mr. Jukes bounced out of the room, dragging Tom, who looked wistfully back.
“The boy is mad! Stark, staring mad, by Jove!” exclaimed the angry magnate as he stamped his way out of the hospital.
“I suppose anyone would think me a fool for what I’ve done,” thought Jack, as he lay back on the pillows after the frantic Mr. Jukes’ departure, “but I couldn’t help it. I’m not going to be a rich man’s pawn if I know it. What was it he said? Work out my own salvation? Well, I’ll do it, and maybe I’ll astonish some folks before long. Too bad, though I’m not such a chump as not to know what powerful friends and influence can do in the world, and now, through no fault of my own, I’ve had to chuck away both. But if grit and determination will help any, I’ll get up the ladder yet.”
Not long after that Uncle Toby arrived with cheering news. The Ajax was docked in the Erie Basin and would not sail for three days more, owing to a defective boiler which would have to be repaired.
“So I can join her, after all,” thought Jack, cheered vastly by the news. “Well, that’s a streak of fat to put alongside the lean!”
CHAPTER XXXI.
A WHISPER OF DANGER.
Jack made his second eastward trip on the Ajax under smiling skies and seas almost as smooth as glass. Nothing out of the routine happened, and in due course the Ajax, once more in ballast, cleared from Antwerp for the home run. Jack had heard nothing more from Mr. Jukes and deemed that the magnate had utterly cast him off.