While walking slowly along the wharf, and looking wistfully over the many fishing vessels crowded into the basin, in search of a familiar face, Breeze was slapped on the shoulder, and a well-known voice exclaimed,
“Vy, Breeza, ma boy! how you vas? Vere you come from, eh?”
Turning, he saw the smiling face of old Mateo, the Portuguese cook who, on board the Sea Robin, had fed him with milk from the “lit tin cow” when he was a baby. The old cook had always retained a warm affection for the boy whom he had thus cared for in his helplessness, and had never returned to Gloucester without visiting him and bringing him some present. Now to see him seemed to Breeze almost like a glimpse of home.
Mateo, who, in spite of his years, was still hale and hearty, and one of the best cooks to be found in the fishing fleet, would listen to nothing where they stood. He insisted upon dragging Breeze aboard a new and handsome schooner named the Albatross, in which he had shipped for a cruise to the George’s. She had left Gloucester the day before, and run up to Boston, where her skipper had some business to attend to. Now she was to sail again within an hour.
Pulling his young friend down into the forecastle, and seating him before the mess-table, Mateo exclaimed, “Vell, Breeza, you hongry, eh?”
To him eating was the most important business of life, and until Breeze had assured him that he had just finished one breakfast, and had no room for another mouthful, he would listen to nothing else. His mind being set at rest on this point, Mateo asked,
“Vell, you not hongry, ma boy, ver is ze C’loo?”
“Gone to the bottom,” answered Breeze, “and poor Rod Mason has gone with her.”
“Vat you say? ze C’loo loss, and Rod Mason drowned? Oh, ze holy feesh! an his bruzzer Bill here, on ze ’Batross!”
It was indeed so; the only brother of the drowned man had shipped in the Albatross the day before. When he heard the sad news brought by Breeze, he declared he must return at once to Gloucester, and make arrangements for the future of his brother’s family. He would not even wait for the skipper’s return, but, collecting his dunnage, hurried away to catch the first train for home.