“Several thousand, I believe, but of course Brown will get his friends to make it good, and get away. He’s all right with Mr. Ropesend, somehow, and the old man, I hear, is going to send him off with Captain Crojack, so it can be hushed up.”
“Well, I’m sorry for him, for one. He’s a good fellow, and he’s done more than one man a good turn through his influence. He never hesitates to help a friend, and that is more than can be said for Anderson. I never did like that fellow’s face—”
Here I lost the drift of what was said. I had heard enough, however, to excite my curiosity again, and I sat wondering what had happened.
Young Mr. Brown had been cashier for the firm for several years. I had met him several times in the shipping-house, and we held a sort of speaking acquaintance. He had handed me my last freight money when I was master of the Southern Cross.
The man Anderson was bookkeeper for the firm and a nephew of Mr. Tackles, the junior member. I had never spoken to him, but knew him well enough by sight.
There was evidently something wrong, so I thought, but as more could be learned by keeping quiet than in any other way, I didn’t allow my curiosity to worry me.
In a few minutes the clerks left the room, and I finished the drink I had ordered. Then I paid my score from a bag of rather light pocket ballast, and strolled down to the dock where the Arrow lay.
Larry O’Toole, the big, red-headed, freckle-faced second mate, was hard at work on her main-deck getting a mixed cargo into her. He had been second mate with me once before, and he gave me a hearty greeting as I climbed aboard.
I reported to Captain Crojack, and then got into my working togs to start the men loading at the fore hatch. Every one aboard the ship knew me, and even the old rigger, who was setting up the backstays, had sailed with my father, Captain Gore, when he was the crack skipper of the Yankee deep-water fleet, and who had gone on his long cruise when I was yet a boy.
I felt my position to be rather uncomfortable at first, but a sailor soon learns to adapt himself to all circumstances, and I reasoned that it would be better to appear as a good mate than as a poor skipper. Then I took hold in earnest, and it wasn’t long before we had the clipper settling in a way that bid fair to have her on her load-line in a pair of days.