He had never become his old self again. He was like one of the splendid square-rigged ships which had been degraded to spend its last days as a coal barge. But he had learned to keep his sorrows and regrets to himself, and, gray-haired hero that he was, lived and toiled for the "little girl," who was the one anchor to hold him from drifting on the lee shore of a broken and useless old age.
David Downes had grown very close to the ship-master's heart. His young strength and his hope and pride in his calling were like a fresh sea-breeze. Nor did anything have quite as much power to kindle Captain Bracewell's emotions as David's confidence that somehow and some day the message would come that a master was needed on the quarter-deck of some fine deep-water sailing ship. Even the bos'n of the Roanoke, to whom David had told his dreams, took a lively interest in the matter and went so far as to declare:
"The very first Christmas what I makes my fortunes I vill put a four-masted Yankee ship in your stockings, boy, mit stores and crew ready for sea, and this granddaddy of yours walkin' up and down the poop, so?"
When the Roanoke was ordered into dry-dock at Southampton, at the end of David's first year in her, she missed a voyage and the cadet had to be content with letters from his friends in New York. In the first packet of mail was a surprising lot of news from Margaret, which read as follows:
Dear Brother Davy:
It is awful lonesome without you for seven whole weeks. Grandfather misses you more than he thinks he lets me see, and he is almost as fidgety as when we landed from the dear old Pilgrim. Mr. Becket is in port and is the cheerfulest of us all though he ought to be the saddest. After being chief officer in that coastwise steamer for three years, he was silly enough to play a joke on his skipper in Charleston last week. And, of course, the old man found it out. Mr. Becket is a perfect dear, but he hasn't much sense when he gets one of his fits of the do-funnies. The captain was in a barber shop ashore, getting his whiskers cut off for the summer season. And Mr. Becket paid two hackmen to walk in as if they just happened there, and begin to talk to each other about the fire on the wharves. Of course, the captain pricked up his ears, and then one of the men said:
"They tell me it blazed up just like an explosion and is right smack alongside the Chesapeake."
That was Mr. Becket's steamer, you know. One side of the captain's whiskers was off and the other wasn't, and he made a jump from the chair, took one of the hackmen by the neck, shoved him through the door, and threw him up on the box of his carriage. Then the captain hopped inside and told the man to drive to the wharf like fury. Of course, the hackman had not expected to be caught this way, but he had to go or else the captain would have broken his neck for him, at least that is what he said he would do.
And when they got to the wharf the captain flew out of the cab and down to his ship. The deck was full of passengers and they laughed till they cried, for the captain must have been a sight with only half his whiskers on. Mr. Becket says they were a fathom long, but he is a terrible exaggerator, as you know. Then the captain ran back after the hackman and caught him and scared him so that he told on Mr. Becket. Wasn't it a shame? Anyhow, he was a horrid captain to his officers and Mr. Becket says he is going to wait for the ship you expect to build for grandfather and me. Write soon and come home as quick as you can to
Your Most Affectionate Little Sister,
Margaret.
David tore open an envelope that bore the marks of Mr. Becket's ponderous fist, hoping for more light on this family tragedy. The luckless mate had no more to say, however, than this:
Dear Davy:
Do you need a strong and willing seaman in your gilt-edged packet? The coasting trade don't agree with my delicate health. I have left the Chesapeake owing to one of them cruel misunderstandings that makes a sailor's life as uncertain as the lilies of the field which are skylarkin' to-day and are cut down and perisheth to-morrow. It is too painful to bother your tender young feelings with. Hold on, I don't think I want to ship with you. Your skipper wears a fine crop of tan whiskers. They would be sure to fill me with sad and tormentin' memories. All's well, and they can't keep a good man down. Your shipmate,
Abel Y. Becket.
David read the letter to the bos'n, expecting sympathy, but that hard-hearted mariner laughed boisterously, and said:
"He got vat was comin' to him, the red-headed old sundowner. I know that Becket man. I wish he shipped as a seaman mit me. I make him yump mit a rope's end. He, ho, ho!—the old man mit his whiskers carried away on the port side. I give a month's wages to see him."
David grew a little hot at such callous treatment of a friend in distress, but could not help smiling as the bos'n trudged off about his work, wagging his head and muttering: