Ben told me this story while he ate. He was the liveliest kind of a companion. I liked him immensely from the start, and the longer I knew him the better I liked him. This was his first deep sea voyage, but he had been looking forward to it ever since he was in petticoats—unlike myself, who had only longed for the sea but knew I probably would never be allowed to follow my bent.
Now, it seemed, Fate had flung me right into the life I had so longed for. Had it not been for mother and the fears I felt for her in the mesh of Chester Downes’ web, I should have welcomed this chance that had put me aboard the whaling bark Scarboro.
“And she’s a fine old craft,” declared the young second mate. “Maybe she’s a bit tender in her bends, but she’s sailed in every quarter of the globe and has brought home many a cargo of oil. We all own shares in her—in the bark herself, I mean—we Rogerses and Gibsons. I’ve a twentieth part myself in pickle against the time I’m twenty-one,” and he laughed, meaning that his guardian held that investment for him—and a very good slice of fortune his holdings in the old Scarboro proved to be, at the end of the voyage.
But now we were at the beginning of it—all the romance and adventure was ahead of us. Before noon I was not sorry to be aboard of the bigger craft and looked with equanimity upon my own bonny sloop stowed amidships. The wind had wheeled again and coming abaft, the bark shot on into the southward, trying to outrun the gale. Had I not been picked up as I was I might have been swamped in the Wavecrest.
For a week, or more, we ran steadily toward the tropics, and in all that time we passed—and that distantly—but two steam vessels and only one sailing craft. There was no chance for me to get home. I had to possess my soul with such patience as I could, while the old Scarboro bore me swiftly away toward the Southern Seas.
Chapter XIII
In Which Tom Anderly Relates A Story That Arouses My Interest
Captain Rogers was not a harsh man, but he was a stern disciplinarian. That he could not change the course of his ship to land me in some port, or to put me aboard a homeward bound vessel, is not to be wondered at. He had both his owners and his crew to think of. I was thankful, when I saw the week’s weather that followed my boarding the Scarboro, that I had been saved from further battling with the elements in the sloop.