“I wouldn’t care so much,” said Edwards, “if it hadn’t been a gift from the men in the store.” Impulsively, he turned to Harvey and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Say, Harvey,” he exclaimed, “when you and I get ashore again—if we ever do—we’ll go and hunt up this young Mr. Jenkins.”
“All right,” replied Harvey; “but it may not be quite so bad as you think. We’ll get through some way, I guess.”
Oddly enough, either by reason of the lack of responsibility that weighed on the spirits of the man, or because of a lingering eagerness for adventure, in spite of the dubious prospects, the boy, Harvey, seemed the more resolute of the two.
“Well,” responded Edwards, “I’m sorry you’re in a scrape; but so long as you’re here, why, I’m glad you’re the kind of a chap you are. We’ll help each other. We’ll stand together.”
And they shook hands upon it again.
“Now,” said Edwards, “here’s how I came here. I’m a travelling man, for a jewelry house—Burton & Brooks, of Boston. I was on the road, got into Washington the other night, and sold a lot of goods there. But one of my trunks hadn’t come on time, and I was hung up for a day with nothing to do. Never had been in Baltimore, and thought I’d run down for a few hours.
“I got dinner at a restaurant and went out to look around. I went along, hit or miss, and brought up down by the water-front. This chap, Jenkins, bumped into me and apologized like a gentleman; we got to talking, and he invited me into one of those saloons along the front. Beastly place, and I knew it; but I was off my guard. He certainly was slick, talked about his family and Johns Hopkins, and pumped me all the time—I can see it now—till he found I wasn’t stopping at any hotel, but had just run in to town for the day.
“That was all he wanted. Saw the game was safe, and then he and the fellow that ran the place must have fixed it up together. I’ll bet he stands in with most of these places on the water-front. He apologized for the place, I remember; said it was rough but clean, and the oysters the best in Baltimore. Well, I don’t remember much after that, until I woke up in that hole on the schooner that brought us down here. I know we had something to drink—and that, so help me, is the last that anyone ever gets Tom Edwards to take. Shake on that, too.”
He had a hearty, bluff way of talking, and a frankness in declaring himself to be the biggest simpleton that was ever caught with chaff, that compelled friendship.