“Well, we’ll see,” responded the old seaman, pursing up his lips. “I shall miss Brandon’s help—a handier lad I never see—but he will have to lay low till after the whaleback sails.”
He went back to the work of getting the steamer ready for departure, expecting every hour that Brandon would appear. But the captain’s son did not show up that day, nor the next.
Monday came and Number Three was all ready for sailing. Her crew of twenty men, beside the officers, were aboard.
The first and third mates were likewise present, the former, Mr. Coffin, being a tall, shrewd looking, pleasant faced man, who eternally chewed on the end of a cigar (except when eating or sleeping) although he was never seen to light one; and Mr. Bolin, the third, a keen, alert little man who looked hardly older than Brandon himself.
But Brandon did not come. The new captain of the whaleback, and the owner himself, were greatly worried by the boy’s continued absence.
They had already set on foot inquiry for the youth’s whereabouts, but nothing had come of it.
They did discover that Uncle Arad had gone back to Rhode Island, and gone back alone. The “scaly” ward politician who held the onerous position of deputy sheriff, and who had sought to arrest the boy, had not been successful, Brandon’s friends knew, for the man haunted the pier at which the whaleback lay, day and night.
“If he don’t come tonight, Adoniram,” Caleb declared, “we shall sail in the morning, just the same—and that by the first streak of light, too. You will be here, and I can trust you to look out for the lad. I must be away after those di’monds. Don’ll turn up all right, I know right well; and we mustn’t let them swabs get ahead of us, and reach the brig first.”
He had taken the precaution ere this to have his own and Brandon’s effects brought down to the boat. He was ready, in fact, to cast off and steam away from the dock at a moment’s notice.
As the evening approached Caleb ordered the fires built under the boilers, and everything to be made ready for instant departure. Adoniram Pepper came down after dinner and remained in the whaleback’s cabin, hoping to see Brandon once again before the steamer sailed.