Tom Haines was one of the first men he met on deck.
“Well, have you made up your mind where you’re going to take the yacht to this voyage?” Kit asked, as they shook hands.
“Don’t call her a yacht!” Tom laughed. “We’d have too many big bills to pay if she was our yacht. It’s better as it is: we get a salary and a sea-voyage at the same time. Yes, we’re chartered for Nassau this trip, to bring back pineapples and sponges; and we’ll be off in four or five days.”
“For Nassau!” Kit repeated; “why, that’s—” but there he stopped.
“That’s right,” Tom said, still laughing. “Stick to your old rule and never say you don’t know a thing, but go and find it out. I know what you’re thinking about. You want to go down in the cabin and look at the map to see where Nassau is. But I’ll save you the trouble. It’s the capital of the Bahama Islands, in the northern West Indies, and about a thousand miles from New York; so that will make a short voyage. But there’s more news for you: you have a new cabin steward.”
“No!” Kit answered, not at all sorry to hear it. “Where’s the old steward?”
“I should think in Bellevue Hospital by this time,” Tom replied, “unless he’s reformed. He got on a terrible spree and fell to breaking the crockery, so the Captain sent him off in a hurry. The new man is a Scotchman named MacNish, and that’s all I can tell you about him. There’s a new galley boy, too; but that doesn’t count for much.”
“Not to you,” Kit declared, “but it does to me, because now I’m not the newest hand on the ship. But I must go down and report myself.”
He did not see the new steward, who was at work in the pantry; but Captain Griffith called him into his stateroom.
“I am glad you are back promptly,” he said, “for to-morrow we begin taking in cargo for Nassau, and I want you to keep tally as it comes on board. It is not exactly cabin boy’s work, but you do it carefully, and it is good experience for you.”