Kit sat down and took up the pen, and had just begun to write when something happened that gave him so much satisfaction that he could hardly keep a straight face. There came a knock at the door, and the engineers’ mess-room boy stepped in with the engineer’s report of the number of tons of coal in the bunkers. For this boy to see him seated in the Captain’s stateroom, writing at the Captain’s desk, with the Captain himself standing by watching him, was the best answer he could give to the assertion that he was a “farmer” and a “preacher.” Chock Cheevers could not have looked more astonished if he had seen one of the stokers on the bridge taking an observation.
The little interruption over, Kit wrote, as neatly and plainly as he could, “Christopher Silburn, cabin boy, steamship North Cape, for Sisal.”
“Yes, that is a good plain hand,” the Captain said, taking the paper. “I will let you try it, at any rate. You can go ahead while I go up on the bridge. Remember that you can’t be too careful.”
He hooked the stateroom door open as he went out; and he had hardly been gone five minutes before Mr. Hanway, the big, powerful second mate, went down to his room for a reefing jacket. Seeing the new boy at the Captain’s desk, and being fond of a little quiet fun, he went up to the open door, touched his cap in mock politeness, and said,
“She’s heading sou-sou-west, sir.”
Kit hardly knew whether he dared joke with the second mate or not; but with an inspiration he looked up from his work without the least change of countenance, and, returning the salute, replied,
“Very good, sir; keep her so, sir.”
More than an hour passed before the Captain returned from the bridge, and in the interval Kit nearly filled one of the large sheets.
“That will do for to-night,” the Captain said, looking over the page. “You have done it very well; but there’s more than one night; you can do a little at it every evening.”
Then the steward had something to say when Kit went into the pantry, which also opened from the cabin. The steward was not pleased to see the new boy taken into the Captain’s favor.