The father straightened himself up with a dignity that made the movement noble, and faced the official with eyes that looked across the boy’s body.
Between the time he had gone down into the cabin and came out of it, twenty years seemed to have been added to his age. In his grief, he looked like some old chieftain who had given up the life of his favorite son in his country’s cause, and was now bearing the body home to his castle to mourn over it.
A little shadow of deeper pain passed across his face as he looked at the intruder on his woe, and then he said simply:
“He is my son.”
At the sound of his voice, and the look in his face, the coroner recoiled from the captain as if he had been struck. The man in the skiff uncovered his head. He thought Young Dan was dead.
The captain, still holding the boy in his arms, stepped down into the skiff and held him close to his breast as the man at the oars pulled slowly toward the tug. By this time the health officer’s boat had come up to the skiff, and the doctor, leaning over the rail, said quietly: “Let me see him, captain.”
Cap’n Dan looked up at the doctor.
“He’s dead,” he said, almost in a whisper.
“Won’t you let us see him? There may be a chance,” the doctor pleaded.
Then Cap’n Dan held his son out to the two doctors, who laid him down on a blanket on the deck.