My zealous assistant shouted the usual warnings, and passengers on the wharf, who were waiting for the ferry-boat, were invited to come on board. Some of them accepted the assurance of Waddie that we should connect with the Hitaca boat at Centreport, and took passage with us. Just as the Middleport, with her indignant passengers, approached the wharf, the Ucayga backed out, and commenced her trip up the lake.
“You appear to be in a hurry, Wolf?” said Colonel Wimpleton, taking a seat with me in the wheel-house, where Van Wolter had the helm.
I showed him the card on which I had written out the time I proposed to make.
“We can leave Ucayga at four o’clock as well as quarter of an hour later,” I added. “The Lightning Express cannot land a passenger in Centreport in a minute less than an hour and a quarter. We can make our sailing-time in just that space. If we can save five or ten minutes of our stay at Ruoara, we need not be more than five or ten minutes behind this time in reaching Centreport.”
“Do as you think best, Wolf,” replied Colonel Wimpleton, with the most friendly smile I had ever seen on his face.
“We shall get to Centreport first to-day, without a doubt.”
We discussed the matter for a while, but we were satisfied that nothing more than a temporary advantage could be gained until we had another steamer. Before the Ucayga reached the islands I took a walk through the boat. Among the passengers I met quite a number whom I had known on the Lightning Express, and was very kindly congratulated upon my advancement. Some of them laughed at the idea of a boy like me commanding such a steamer; but I defended myself from the charge of being a boy. I should soon be seventeen; my mustache was beginning to develop itself, and I was only a few inches shorter than my father. Younger fellows than I had done bigger things than to command a lake steamer. I had shaved myself every week or fortnight for six months, borrowing my father’s razor when he was away, and performing the operation in the secrecy of my chamber, with the door bolted, to prevent the possibility of an interruption, and the consequent annoyance of being twitted.
I made a desperate resolve, after being “bothered” for my juvenility, to purchase a razor and other implements, and shave myself every day, so as to encourage the downy growth upon my upper lip and chin. I also decided to have a frock-coat, and to wear a hat, in order still further to obviate the objectionable circumstances of “the young captain of the Ucayga steamer.” I regarded it as rather malicious in people to insist upon it that I was a boy. I was not a boy. I was at least a young man, and I was doing a man’s work. They might as well call a man of thirty a boy because he played baseball.
In my tour of inspection I called upon my father in the engine-room. I had not seen him since the boat left Centreport. Like a faithful engineer, he had looked only at the machinery before him, and not troubled himself about other matters. He hardly knew anything of the exciting events in which he had been a prominent actor.
“How goes it, Wolf?” he asked, as I sat down in his armchair.