“Then you’ll die an old maid,” Kit laughed; “don’t you know that cardinals are Catholic priests, and never marry?”
They were a merry party at supper, though Harry was disconsolate for a while at hearing that Kit was going to leave the North Cape.
“Why, I don’t know what we’ll do without him on board, Mrs. Silburn!” he exclaimed. “It will be like a different ship. It will make a great change for me, I tell you. No more good times on shore now for the cabin boy, I suppose. The Captain thinks I’m too young and giddy to go ashore alone in strange ports, though I’m not; but he was always satisfied when I was with Kit.”
The whole story of their visit to Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde had to be told while they were eating, and their meeting with the mysterious stranger; and Harry kept them in roars of laughter when he described how the old and young priests always entered the room “on their marrow bones,” as he called it. Somewhere in Marseilles he had heard the French pronunciation of Vieve’s name, and he added to the merriment by insisting upon giving it the French twang whenever he addressed her: “Miss Zhou-vay-ve; Miss Zhou-vay-ve.”
The spectre at the feast did not show itself till all was over and Harry had gone home, for Kit guarded it carefully as long as he could. But at last he had to let it out.
“My change of work will cut short my visit home,” he announced. “I can’t go off suddenly and leave my employers in the lurch, you know. They must have time to get some one else in my place; and if they ask it, I may have to wait another voyage before going on the Trinidad. But if they let me off, I will still have a great deal to do. My accounts must all be straightened out, and I will have some business with the tailors. I will have to wear the company’s uniform on the Trinidad, you know.”
“Ah! that’s it!” Vieve declared, pretending to be hurt at Kit’s leaving them sooner than he expected, though it was not all pretence. “He wants to get his new clothes! Won’t he be grand, though, when he comes out in a new uniform with gold braid!”
“Yes, you know I always think so much about my clothes,” he answered. “But I’ll be with you all day to-morrow; and busy enough, too, writing letters. To-morrow I must write to that New Zealand consul again, and there are several more to be written. Then the next morning I must go back to New York. But then this won’t be like those long trips to Europe. Why, I’ll be back again in no time at all. The Trinidad only runs to the island of Trinidad and back, stopping at St. Kitts, Antigua, St. Lucia, Martinique, Dominica, and Barbadoes. She makes the round trip in twenty-eight days. Being a mail and passenger boat, you know, she has to make time.”
It was hard work for Kit to go back to the North Cape to say good-by, after his employers had generously released him at once, with many expressions of satisfaction and good will. It was on her that he had changed from a waif on the docks to a cabin boy, and from cabin boy to supercargo. In her cabin he had made his start in life, and every man on board was his friend. He could not bid good-by to Captain Griffith in the cabin and then go away. The crew crowded around him to wish him happiness and prosperity. Men who had never shown any particular interest in him before, seemed grieved to have him go. He had to shake hands with Mr. Mason and Mr. Hanway, with Tom Haines and his chief, with the steward, even with Chock Cheevers.
In four days more, when in all the glory of bright new uniform he stood on the deck of a faster and handsomer ship, watching once more the hoisting of the flags as she sped by the Sandy Hook signal station, it gave him a start when he saw that the uppermost flag did not bear the familiar number of the North Cape.