The next day the Ajax was ready for sea. She was to sail “in ballast,” that is, without cargo. Jack thought her uglier than ever as she lay at the dock with steam up, as a white plume from her scape pipe testified, and with big patches of rust on her black sides; for the work of repairing these ugly patches would not be done till a few days before she arrived in New York.
Now that she was so high out of the water, the “tanker” looked like a big black cigar with a miniature turret on either end.
“She’ll roll like a bottle going over,” the crew prophesied; a prophesy, by the way, which was to be fulfilled.
But Jack forgot all this when at last the orders to sail came from the agent’s office and, with a roaring of the whistle, the “tanker” started on the voyage home.
Raynor came up to Jack as he stood gazing down at the puffing tugs which were helping the marine monster clear.
“Glad to be going home, Jack?” he asked.
“What a question! Glad? I should say so! Of course I love my work and all that, but after all there’s no place like home, you know.”
“That’s so,” assented Raynor, “although I haven’t much of a home. Both my parents died when I was a kid, and except for a sister who lives way up New York state, I haven’t a relative in the world that I know of.”
“I am almost as badly off,” confessed Jack, and he went on to tell Raynor about his home life.
“What a jolly way to live,” cried the young engineer, “on a flower-garden schooner! That’s the greatest ever!”