Rather puzzled by his quick surrender to this summons, he turned back to the house and forgot to pick up the axe. He walked briskly, chin up, a man astir and efficient. Queer how a few lines of that letter had thrilled his matter-of-fact mind! He liked the sound of Cartagena and the Spanish Main. Where the devil was Cartagena? He knew there was a port of that name on the coast of Spain. This other one was somewhere in the Caribbean, down Colombia way, as he vaguely recalled.
Into the kitchen swung Richard Cary and demanded to know where the atlas was kept. His mother wiped the flour from her hands and exclaimed:
“First time I ever saw you in a hurry about anything except your meals. What under the sun ails you?”
“Outward bound—the night train for New York. I want to find out where I go from there.” His mellow voice rang through the low-studded rooms. His mother was dismayed. The sea had called her towering son and he was a different being. Almost timidly she said:
“But you expected to make a longer visit, Richard. Why, you aren’t really rested up. You sat around here—”
“And enjoyed every minute of it,” he broke in, with a boyish laugh. “Now I’m going south in a banana boat, where the flying fishes play. Do I have to pull this house down to break out the atlas?”
“Mercy sakes, no! It’s under the Bible on the parlor table where it has set for years. There’s yellow fever and snakes down there, and how are you off for summer underwear?”
With his chin in his hand he pored over the map of the Caribbean and the sailing tracks across that storied sea. Jamaica and the Isthmus of Panama! Thence his finger moved along the coast to Cartagena and Santa Marta and La Guayra. His kindled fancy played around the words. They were like haunting melody. It was an emotion curiously novel. To find anything like it, he had to hark back to the fairy tales of childhood.
The feeling passed. His mother’s anxious accents recalled him to himself.
“But is it necessary, Richard, for you to rush off and take a second officer’s position? Why don’t you wait for something better? It’s not a mite like you to fly off at a tangent like this. Common sense was always your strongest point.”