“If Cap’n Saunders ain’t here,” said Ed Davis, “we’ll get another boat?”
Clem nodded. Together they were walking up a side street of San Pedro to the little cottage where Captain Ezra Saunders, a retired veteran of many seas and seasons, was living on the income furnished him by two or three fishing boats, which were run by his son Tom, a young fellow a year or two older than Clem.
As they turned in at the gate of the vine-shaded cottage, however, they knew that the captain was at home from the foghorn voice which bellowed forth:
“Howdy, Clem!”
Ezra Saunders was a remarkable old man—though he was scarce sixty years of age. He was crippled by rheumatism, and had lost a leg at the knee from a shark bite, while his right arm had been paralyzed on his last voyage—when he had brought the schoonerMary Connorsthrough a thousand miles of typhoon and had saved the lives of twenty men.
With all this, however, Clem had never seen the old man in gloomy mood. Ever was Captain Saunders smiling, optimistic, cheerful. As he and Ed Davis shook hands, and stepped up to the porch, where easy-chairs awaited them, the skipper bellowed to his wife, and Mrs. Saunders also came forth, to fold each of the visitors in a warm embrace.
“Well, well!” she exclaimed, wiping a tear from her ruddy cheeks. “Clem, if you ain’t become a real city man! Say! Wouldn’t your mother ha’ been proud of you now!”
“I hope so,” and Clem’s brown eyes saddened a trifle. Since his mother’s death Mrs. Saunders had been the only mother he had known—and that had been twelve summers past. Then he looked up, with his old cheerful smile. “I do believe you’re getting thin!”
“Nonsense, you vagabond!” Mrs. Saunders, who weighed two hundred, and knew it, laughed through her welcoming tears. “Don’t you flatter me, now! You boys ain’t goin’ to run right off, I hope? I been makin’ pies to-day, and it seems to me you two rapscallions used to like Ma Saunders’ pies right well before you got stuck up an’ citified.”
“Nothin’ stuck up about me, ’cept my collar,” said Ed Davis, grinning. “I been hankering for your pies, ma, ever since we left Pedro. You bet we’re goin’ to stay a while! How’s Tom? Everybody well?”
Mrs. Saunders’ ruddy face seemed to assume a slightly less cheerful expression.
“Yes,” she said, turning to the door. “Tom’s well. You folks set and talk while I see to them pies. They’re in the oven now.”
The door slammed. Clem looked at the captain’s white-whiskered face and frowned.
“What’s the matter, cap’n?” he asked directly. “You’re looking kind of peaked around the gills. Rheumatism bad again?”
“No-o, I reckon not.” Captain Saunders stroked his beard, and summoned up the ghost of his olden-days smile. “I’m hungerin’ for salt water, I reckon.”
“First time I ever knew you to lie to me, cap’n,” said Clem quietly.
Captain Saunders flushed. He looked at Ed Davis, and then met Clem’s accusing brown eyes. With fumbling fingers he began to fill his pipe.
“Got a match, Clem?” he asked, with a little quaver in his voice.
Silently Clem produced the article in question. It began to seem as though something were very wrong, indeed. Ed Davis sat watching and listening, his grin gone. When the old skipper had lighted the pipe he leaned back and looked at Clem again.
“Well, Clem, I—I guess it was the first time. I ain’t much used to lies. But sometimes lies has to come.”
“Not between us, cap’n,” and Clem’s strong, bronzed face lightened. “What’s the trouble?”
“You,” said the old man, puffing out a huge cloud of smoke.
“I! What do you mean?”
Captain Saunders sighed. His weather-beaten face was set in lines of sadness.
“Clem, you allus been a mighty good boy, and I know it better’n most people. But when it comes to a scrap, you got a reputation around here like a downeast mate. I don’t blame you none, o’ course.”
“Go on,” urged Clem as the skipper paused. He wondered what was coming next.
“Well, Tom allus did admire you a heap, Clem, but since you been gone to the city Tom’s kind o’ got the notion that he’s stepped into your fightin’ boots, and he’s gone around handin’ out some fine lickin’s. For a fact, Tom can light like a streak.”
“I guess he came by it honestly,” was the reply, and Clem smiled slightly as he eyed the old skipper’s broad shoulders.
“Well, mebbe so. But—say, Clem, you know Tom’s a good boy, don’t you?”
“You bet he is!” said Clem, frowning.
Inwardly, he commented otherwise. While he knew Tom Saunders pretty well, he also knew that Tom had companions who were not of the old Saunders strain.
“To tell the truth, Clem, Tom’s been gettin’ kind o’ out o’ hand.” The skipper sighed again. “He’s been comin’ home drunk every once in a while, if you want it straight. He’s tryin’ to be cock o’ the walk around here, like you used to be—but he ain’t doing it your way, Clem.”
Clem Frobisher felt as though a cold hand had touched him and had sent a shiver through him.
He was not responsible, of course; and, very likely, Tom Saunders was no worse than the average young fellow. But that was far from the point.
Clem loved the honest, simple, manly old skipper, and he loved Mrs. Saunders. Sooner than hurt them in any way he would have cut off his right hand.
Yet he knew that he had hurt them grievously, if unintentionally. He knew that Tom Saunders, misled by the wrong sort of friends, was heaping sorrow’s upon these kindly old parents of his largely by aspiring to walk in the tracks of Clem Frobisher. And EzraSaunders had hit the nail on the head by saying that Tom was not doing it Clem’s way.
“He’s running the boats all right, I suppose?” queried Clem, with sinking heart.
“Oh, he ’tends to ’em well enough—nothin’ extra. Clem, I wish to thunder these was the ol’ days! I’d ship that boy A. B. under the toughest, hardest pair o’ bucko mates ever stepped, an’ I’d ship him around the Horn! When he got back, by glory, he’d either be dead or—or different! And”—the skipper sighed heavily—“I dunno’s I’d give a durn which way it come out. I b’lieve it’s breakin’ Ma Saunders’ heart—I do so!”
Suddenly Ed Davis leaned forward, his lean frame quivering with eagerness. For five minutes he spoke rapidly, excitedly, earnestly. Clem and the skipper listened in amazement, that changed, on Clem’s part, to narrow-eyed calculation, and finally to swift resolve.
“That’s enough!” he broke in suddenly. “Cap’n, we’ll go out on a fishin’ trip in the oldSadie, after supper to-night. If Tom ain’t—hasn’t—come home, I’ll find him. And I promise you this, on my word of honor: If I don’t change his lookout on life I’ll never show my face here again!”
The old skipper gazed at Clem with dewy eyes.
“Clem,” he said brokenly, “Clem, mebbe ye can. But, lad, it’s a man-sized job! I reckon you’ve bit off more’n ye can chew—but Heaven bless ye, lad!”
“And now for ma’s pies!” said Ed Davis, with a grin.