“He looks to me like a crank, Sam,” said the agent. “But it’s your fireworks, not mine.”
“Whatever induced you to take him?” Captain Steele enquired, wonderingly.
“The bare fact that he was so anxious to go,” I replied. “He may be a crank on the automobile question, and certainly it is laughable to think of shipping a machine to Los Angeles on a freighter, around the Horn; but the poor fellow seemed to be a gentleman, and he’s hard up. It appeared to me no more than a Christian act to help him out of his trouble.”
“You may be helping him into trouble, if that confounded cargo of yours takes a notion to shift,” observed my father, with a shake of his grizzled head.
“But it’s not going to shift, sir,” I declared, firmly. “I’m looking for good luck on this voyage, and the chances are I’ll find it.”
The agent slapped me on the shoulder approvingly.
“That’s the way to talk!” he cried. “I’m morally certain, Sam, that you’ll land that cargo at San Pedro in safety. I’m banking on you, anyhow, young man.”
I thanked him for his confidence, and having bade a last good-bye to my father and my employer I walked away with good courage and made toward my boat, which was waiting for me.
Uncle Naboth was waiting, too, for I found his chubby form squatting on the gunwale.
Uncle Naboth’s other name was Mr. Perkins, and he was an important member of the firm of “Steele, Perkins & Steele,” being my dead mother’s only brother and my own staunch friend. I had thought my uncle in New York until now, and had written him a letter of farewell to his address in that city that very morning.