So long as he lives Breeze will never forget his mother’s cry of “My boy! my boy! my darling boy!” as she sprang to him, clasped him in her arms, and sobbed out her great joy upon his neck.
There were even glad tears on Captain McCloud’s weather-beaten cheeks, as he held both the lad’s hands in his sturdy grasp and exclaimed, “Thank God, my son, that you have been brought in safety back to us.”
BREEZE’S WELCOME HOME.
The happy inmates of the cottage got but little sleep that night, and the next day all Gloucester rang with the joyful news that Breeze McCloud, who had long since been given up for lost, had come back safe and sound, and bringing a fortune with him. Above all, it was whispered that he had come as dorymate of a real, live English lord, who had picked him up somewhere near the north pole, and brought him home in the finest steam-yacht that ever was seen.
Soon after breakfast that morning Lord Seabright and Wolfe Brady appeared at the McCloud cottage, and were warmly welcomed--the former for his great kindness to Breeze, the latter for himself. The English gentleman had asked both Breeze and Wolfe not to say anything at present regarding his errand to America. After a while he led the conversation to Breeze, the mystery surrounding his parentage, and his rescue from the floating cask when a baby.
Then Captain McCloud showed them the very cask that had proved so truly a life-boat to the boy. He told them the date of its discovery, and pointed out on its bottom a partially erased stencil-mark, over which he said he had often puzzled in vain. It was something like this, PE--IP--ÑORA, and although Lord Seabright did not say so at the time, he felt pretty sure that it had originally been “PER SHIP SEÑORA.”
Next, Mrs. McCloud brought out the baby-clothes Breeze had worn when first laid in her arms, and on one dainty little garment showed them the embroidered letters “T. C. T.”
After a while they all went on board the Saga, where her owner had invited them to luncheon. Here the unbounded joy of Nimbus at again meeting with the “cap’n,” in whose company he had suffered so much on board the Esmeralda, was touching to witness.
After luncheon, as they stood on the deck of the yacht, a weather-beaten fishing schooner, with her flag at half-mast, came sailing slowly up the harbor.