"I am glad you have a decent word for me," replied Captain Bruce with the shadow of a smile. "The long and short of it is that I am going to make a clean breast of it to the underwriters' agent, Mr. Prentice, when we get to Key West. It seems to be the only way to clear you, Captain Wetherly. Of course I never dreamed that circumstances could be twisted about to fetch you into this miserable business. But Pringle has gone, and I am not quite enough of a cur to dodge my share of the punishment. I make no defence, but my record was fairly clean until—well, you know when. My owners are shrewd, tricky, close-fisted men who got me into their way of doing business a little at a time. My ideas of right and wrong were warped by degrees. Men don't go bad all at once, Dan. Don't ever forget that. A ship's timbers don't rot overnight and let her founder in the gale that tests her strength. The first speck of rot is almost too small to see, but it grows. At last these people had me fit for their work, and three voyages ago they put it at me that there would be no great sorrow if the Kenilworth met disaster. I should have quit them on the spot, but I took the temptation to sea with me. And in the next voyage I ran afoul of Jeremiah Pringle in Pensacola. He found me willing to listen. Five years ago I would have kicked him out of my cabin. You know the rest of it. Ten thousand dollars was the price if he could have the vessel to wreck. And my owners were ready to give me a bigger, newer ship if I lost her for the insurance. But you spoiled all that, and I am glad you did. I seem to have been a weak-kneed kind of a rascal."
"Bully for you," cried Captain Jim. "Shake hands on it. Dan here was sure you were sorry you ever got into this mess, the first time he met you. But this is mighty serious business for you, Captain Bruce. The underwriters will make an example of you, as sure as guns. Are you going back to England to face the music?"
"It means that I am in disgrace and will command no more ships, I suppose," was the reply. "And I suppose it means a dose of prison, but I don't mean to veer from the course I have charted. There isn't any other way out of it. I would rather be dead along with Jerry Pringle than to go on hating myself and living in a hell of my own making."
"I reckon you are right," said Captain Jim after a long silence. "It pays to go straight, and every man must work out his own salvation."
"Anyhow, you would feel a heap worse if your ship had gone to pieces," Dan ventured to suggest in his effort to find a ray of sunshine in the cloud.
"Right you are, my lad. It has been a great fight, and a man couldn't work alongside this uncle of yours very long without wanting to live straight and clean. You helped save the Kenilworth, Dan. I haven't forgotten that."
"But you can't square me with old man Prentice," sadly returned Dan. "I think it's great of you to stand by Captain Jim, but it doesn't help my case. I am still left high and dry as a liar."
"Things will straighten themselves out now. Don't worry," smiled Captain Bruce. "Mr. Prentice will be easier to handle after he knows the facts in my case."
"How about salvage? Don't I come in on that?" anxiously asked Dan who was not old enough to appreciate the sacrifice involved in Captain Bruce's confession.
"I expect to be paid my towing and wrecking bill to cover my time and expenses," said Captain Jim. "But I don't want any more salvage than that. I won't take blood-money, not even from the pockets of those scoundrelly owners of yours, Captain Bruce. They won't be able to collect a cent of insurance after you make your statement, and the repairs will cost them a small fortune. The underwriters will make it hot enough for them. Trust Prentice for that."