The chief engineer halted in his tracks. With a keener scrutiny than usual he studied the candid, engaging features of Richard Cary, the fearless vision, the resolute chin, the ruddy color, and the thatch of yellow hair. Cary was conscious of this deliberate appraisal. He flushed under it. McClement took another turn along the deck before halting to ask a question:
“Do you resemble the rest of the family, Dick?”
“Absolutely not. My dad used to say I was a throwback, and a long throw at that.”
“Precisely. That is what I am driving at. New England rural stock, you told me. English on both sides, I presume. Where did your forbears come from?”
“Devonshire, all of them,” answered Cary. “My mother’s folks came over from Plymouth a couple of hundred years ago and settled near where they live now. My father’s ancestors came later, just before the Revolution. They hailed from a little village near Bideford, so I used to hear him say.”
“From Devon?” exclaimed McClement, who did not appear greatly surprised. “The Carys of Devon! And your mother was—”
“A Chichester,” said Richard.
“Carys and Chichesters, of course, Dick. And you are the living image of Amyas Leigh in ‘Westward Ho’! He must have been about your build and bulk. The kind of lad they bred in Devon when the world was young!”
“Carys and Chichesters sailed with Drake and Hawkins,” broke in Richard, “in these same seas, and they fought the Spanish Armada along with Walter Raleigh and Martin Frobisher. I found the names in one of your books.”
“Aye, they did all of that and more too,” agreed the chief engineer. “I am too hard-headed to take stock in any fantastic theory of buried memories and such tosh as that. I’ll have to admit, though, that you are a bit startling, Dick. It’s out of the question, of course, that certain impressions and associations could have been handed down through your race, to come to life in you.”