"Zenie!" he called almost inaudibly into the fog. "Zenie, come back! Come back to me!"
A patter of footsteps on the wet deck aroused him, and he looked around. A small cloaked figure had just clambered over the breakwater, and it ran up to him, peering into his face with wide-open, wondering eyes. And they were the eyes of Zenie, set in the same clean-cut little face fringed with the same golden-hued tresses.
"Did you call me, sir?" she asked. "Oh, I beg pardon. I thought I knew you, and that you called me. I don't know—" she stepped back. "My name is Zaza Munson."
"Zaza!" called an anxious voice from the breakwater, and she left him.
The bewhiskered man showed faintly through the fog. "Come along, kid, and go to bed. You mustn't bother the man on lookout. 'Tisn't shipshape."
"Papa," said the child as he lifted her over the barrier, "was my name ever Zenie? Did you call me Zenie when I was little?"
And Bridge, with his tongue hard against the roof of his mouth, and somewhat unsteady on his feet, could just hear the receding voice of the man as he answered:
"No, kid; but your aunt's name was Zenie. She died the day before you were born. You're the dead image of her."
Bridge did not see the child again. He thought of her, of course, marveling at the resemblance and relationship, which he ascribed to coincidence—that now had a meaning to him—but marveling the more at his change of heart, which he ascribed to the kindly thought and comment of the old lady. It began as a furious disgust at his waste of time and energy, but became a serious, practical ambition.
He finished the voyage, and for the first time since going to sea chose his boarding house—the Sailors' Home—and here he talked with second mates and a better class of seamen. He borrowed an Epitome of Navigation, looked it over, and bought one in a second-hand shop, with other books that appealed to him. He stopped drinking, and, with money in his pocket, was able to choose his next ship, an English deep-water craft, whose rules were such as to give him his afternoon watch below and time for study. He furbished up his unused knowledge of arithmetic, and in this ship found a kindly disposed first mate, who lent him an old sextant to puzzle over and become familiar with. He reached for the theory of seamanship as distinct from navigation, and, procuring such textbooks as he could find in foreign ports, mastered the reasons of the various evolutions which so far he had helped perform under orders. When able to, he applied for and passed a second mate's examination, and won a Board of Trade certificate. Then he bought himself a sextant.