"Oh, Captain!" said Alec. "Of course I will, but I never dreamed of such a thing."
"Likely not," said the captain. "But I have known for a long time that it was coming."
"What!" gasped Alec.
"Certainly," said the shipper. "I rather suspected it the first time I set eyes on you. I knew it the night you went overboard after Hawley."
"What do you mean?" asked Alec. "I don't understand it at all, sir."
"It's plain enough, lad. A man of my age can't carry on a business forever. I've needed somebody to help me for a long time back and I've been looking for some one, too. Yet I never could find just the man I wanted as a partner. But when I found how clean and true and fine you were, young man, and when I came to know you well enough to understand that I could trust you as I can my own wife, my mind was made up. What do you think I've had you in the office for, anyway? What do you think I've put my business more and more in your hands for? Didn't you ever suspect that I was training you up to carry on the work when I couldn't do it any longer?"
"Captain!" gasped Alec. "I can hardly believe it. To think of my being an oyster shipper—now—when I was only this morning a deck-hand. It just doesn't seem possible."
"Are you sure that you're satisfied with the bargain? Don't you want to draw out before it's too late?"
An idea came to Alec and he stepped quickly toward the shipper. "There is one thing more I'd like," he said, "something I want more than anything else in the world."
The shipper looked at him uncertainly, questioningly, as though displeased. "Name it," he said brusquely.