“‘I guess yes,’ said I, for I was sure of it now. ‘If you cut into the beast somewhere abaft the mainmast I think you’ll find my trademark in him.’
“Well, sir, they lowered a boat and sent a man to chop into the critter with an axe, and with the first blow the whole thing flummixed—just collapsed, for there was nothing in it but wind. But the man gave two or three more cuts and laid over the flap, and right across it, in big gold letters, was, ‘The Trinidad, New York.’ It was nothing in the world but the paint off our ship, stripped off just like you’d skin an eel. We sold it to the darkies in Dominica afterwards for waterproof coats and galoshes; but I’m not going to put her at that speed again.”
The Captain never repeated his stories, because he always made them up as he went along; and he was so companionable and full of fun that in a short time Kit felt well enough acquainted with him to give him an account of his father’s disappearance and tell him about the man in the New Zealand hospital. The Captain listened with great interest; but even in a matter of such importance he could not quite resist the temptation to crack a joke.
“Didn’t he have a mark on his arm?” he asked. “In all such stories that I’ve read, the missing man had a mark on his arm that he could be identified by. I’ve often thought what an advantage one-legged or one-armed or one-eyed men have. If one of them goes off missing, it’s the easiest matter in the world to identify him.
“But seriously, Silburn,” he went on, “it does look a little as if that man might be your father. It’s nothing against it that he was picked up on an island in the Pacific Ocean. When a man is floating about on a spar, say, or an oar, or anything else that keeps him up, and a ship comes along, he don’t stop to ask whether she’s bound for China or New York. Any port in a storm, and a ship’s as likely to be going one way as another. Then the second ship may be lost, and there you are. If he was the kind of father you want to bring back, I think you can find out whether this is the right man or not. I’ve known some fathers who’d be just as well left at a safe distance of twelve or fifteen thousand miles.”
“Oh, mine isn’t that kind of a father, sir,” Kit answered, not quite knowing whether to laugh or not. “We would do anything in the world to get him back.”
“Then why don’t you go out to New Zealand and see for yourself?” the Captain asked. “You could identify him better than any stranger; and you can’t get anything done for you as well as you can do it yourself.”
This was precisely the point that Kit was trying to get the Captain’s opinion upon.
“But don’t you think, sir,” he asked, “that it is as well to wait till we hear something more definite from the consul out there, and till he sends the photograph?”
“Yes, I think it is,” the Captain replied. “But let me tell you something about consuls, young man. I suppose I’ve seen more of them than you have, for I’ve had business with them nearly all my life. There are some good men in the business—very good—who will put themselves out of their way to do you a service. I don’t mean to deny that. But in general a consul is a man who draws his salary for putting his heels on the mantel and smoking cigars. They get their appointments generally not because they are good men for the place, but on account of some trifling political service. Under that beautiful system we get consuls in important places who ought to be raising turnips out in the southwest corner of New Mexico. I don’t know anything about the consul in Wellington; but as a general rule, don’t you put your trust in consuls, my boy. When you have important business to be done, go and do it yourself. It’s the only safe way. If that was my case out in New Zealand, I’d wait a reasonable time for the photograph, and if it looked anything like my father, I’d be out there so quick I’d strip all the paint off myself.”