Neither Wolfe Brady nor anybody else was to be seen on the Albatross when Breeze reached her. Near by lay the Fish-hawk, to which he had transferred his dunnage that afternoon, but she too was deserted. On the opposite side of the wharf lay a shabby-looking old schooner, named Vixen, on which several men were still at work, evidently getting her ready for sailing. Breeze asked them if they had seen anybody answering Wolfe’s description about there recently.
“Yes,” answered one of them, “I seen a young feller like that hanging round here ’bout half an hour ago. He came over here and got talking with Hank Hoffer, one of our men, and they walked off uptown together. I expect they’ll be back directly.”
“Did you hear them say where they were going?”
“No; seems to me, though, I did hear Hank say something ’bout Grimes’s. Shouldn’t wonder if they’d gone up there to get a drink.”
Breeze started at the mention of Grimes’s, for he knew it to be one of the lowest and very worst drinking-dens in the town. Such places are not permitted by law to exist in Gloucester, but occasionally they escape the vigilance of the police for a short time, and in them many a sturdy fisherman is tempted to squander the money he has risked his life to earn.
Captain McCloud had seen so much of the pitiful misery and sorrow caused by drink that he had brought Breeze up to regard it with horror. As soon as the boy was old enough to realize what he was doing, he had promised his father that, so long as he lived, he would never touch a drop of any intoxicating liquor. He had never signed a pledge, nor had his father asked him to; for although Breeze was slow to make promises, he would as soon cut off his hand as to break one that he had made, and his father trusted him implicitly.
Now, although he was neither a prig nor a goody-goody boy it distressed Breeze to think of any one whom he called friend visiting Grimes’s. His one hope was that, being a stranger in town, Wolfe did not know what sort of a place it was, and that he would leave it and come back as soon as he discovered its character.
In this hope he waited for half an hour longer, and then, as Wolfe still failed to appear, he determined to go in search of him. He knew pretty nearly where Grimes’s was, and walked in that direction. Very soon he saw several men come out from a dark passage-way and turn down the street, talking and laughing loudly. He followed them until satisfied that Wolfe was not among them, and then returned and waited until another party came out from the same passage-way. His friend did not appear this time, and he felt that he must go in and either satisfy himself that Wolfe was not there, or persuade him to come away if he was.
He walked back and forth several times before he could make up his mind to go in. At last, feeling that he was acting the part of a coward, he entered the passage, and finding a closed door at its farther end, tried to open it. The noise that he made was evidently heard inside, for a slide in one of the upper panels of the door was pushed back a few inches, and a bright light flashed full in his face.
“Who are you?” asked a voice through the opening.