Part 19

"Even if people laughed at you for swallowing the anchor, which I believe is how they put it?" asked Mr. Niven.

Chriss laughed without any sign of confusion or embarrassment, and his father noticed it. "One doesn't mind a little banter after being kicked with seaboots, and growled at all day for weeks. You don't fancy it would matter greatly if they did?"

"Not in the least," said Mr. Niven with dry approval, "In fact, the man who does not mind being made fun of has often the best cause for laughing. So you would go back to sea if I told you to?"

"Yes, sir," said Chriss. "Still, if you fancied it would be better I would stay ashore."

"Then," said Mr. Niven, "we'll decide on the latter. You might after years of hard work, and if you were very fortunate, make five hundred pounds a year at sea, but while there are thousands of lads in the country who would be very content with the prospect of getting it, there are considerably fewer who have your opportunities, and by and by I shall want somebody to take up my business after me. If you are to do it you must begin at once at the bottom, do what you are told, and make your way upwards slowly as you would at sea. Now, then, would it suit you to go down to my office at nine o'clock the day after to-morrow?"

"Yes, sir," said Chriss. "It would."

"Then," said Mr. Niven, "that will do in the meanwhile, though we will have a good deal to talk about later. Now, Appleby, you have heard what I proposed to Chriss, and we can find room for you. I will see you get a fair start in life--and what it may lead to afterwards will depend largely upon yourself."

Appleby's answer was quiet but resolute. "I have to thank you, sir, but I am afraid I should never be quite contented away from the sea."

"Don't be hasty," said Mr. Niven. "It's a hard life, but you know that better than I do. I also fancy that if you serve me well you will be a richer man by and by than you ever would be at sea."

Appleby looked at him steadily. "I've been considering ever since I left the _Aldebaran_, sir. It's hard enough--but I can't help fancying it is the life that is best for me."

Mr. Niven nodded gravely. "Then you are right in going back, but we'll try to find you a more comfortable ship. Well, we have decided quite enough for one night, and I fancy Mrs. Niven is waiting for you."

The lads went out, and though both of them afterwards found there was now and then need of all their courage and endurance in the lives they led neither regretted the decision they had made. Niven went into his father's office, and Appleby back to sea, while a good many things happened to both of them before the former, who was now a partner, returned on business to Vancouver. The day after he got there he stood on the wharf with Mr. Holway. It was crowded with travellers making for a steamer on the point of sailing, for the Montreal express had just come in, but Niven was watching the trail of swiftly-moving smoke that smeared the blue sky behind the great pines on Beaver Point.

"That will be her by the pace she's making," he said.

Mr. Holway nodded. "Yes. They're wonderful boats," he said. "It's a long way to Japan, but they keep their time like a clock, and they'll not check the engines until she's close up to the wharf."

"Twin screws," said Niven. "Still, with the barque yonder there's very little room to swing a big vessel in, though, of course, he could scrape past the schooner and back one propeller."

Mr. Holway laughed. "You might have been to sea yourself!"

"Well," said Niven dryly, "I have, and they taught me a good deal in the _Champlain_."

"I had forgotten," said Mr. Holway. "You'll have been glad you left it."

Niven smiled. "There have been times of business anxiety when I've been almost sorry, too. After all, one had nothing to worry over on board the _Champlain_ when his work was done. But she's coming in."

With the blue water frothing at her bows a great white-painted steamer swung out of the shadow of the pines, and while her whistle sent a sonorous scream ringing across the inlet swept towards the wharf. She gleamed like ivory from the purple shimmering in her shadow that was streaked by froth about her water-line to the yacht-like lift of her bows and long sweep of rail, and above it her tiers of houses and rows of boats shone dazzlingly in the sunlight. In every line and flowing curve there was a suggestion of speed and beauty, and Niven was silent as he watched her come on, remembering how the command of such a vessel had once been his most cherished dream. Then as the other steamer splashed away and the liner swung in towards the wharf he saw that one of the officers high up on the bridge was staring at him. Niven knew the brown face under the white cap, and waved his hat, but the officer only raised his hand for a second and then looked straight ahead again. Niven laughed softly as he turned to his companion.

"There's very little difference in Tom Appleby," he said. "It's four years since I've seen him, but if it had been forty I wouldn't have expected him to spare more than a moment from his duties to nod to me."

"That," said Mr. Holway, "is probably the reason he has got on so rapidly, and I know the Company's people here have a high opinion of him. Now sit down. He's not going to thank you for worrying him while he's busy."

It was half-an-hour later when they went on board the great steamer and asked for the second officer. The two young men looked at each other as they shook hands, and each saw a difference in his comrade, for bronzed mate and keen-eyed merchant had both grown used to the yoke of responsibility. They were quieter than they had been, and their faces were graver, while though it was long since they had met, they were not effusive when they spoke.

"Glad to see you, Tom," said Niven.

Appleby nodded. "Of course I needn't tell you the same thing. How did you get here?"

"Allan boat and Canadian Pacific sleeper," said Niven. "I told you I'd been made a partner, and fancied I'd run over to look up some of our customers in Vancouver when I was in Canada. At least, that's one reason. You can guess the other. Now, what's wrong with this Company that you're not commander?"

Appleby laughed. "I've got on so fast already that I can't help fancying friends of mine who put business in the Company's way have as much to do with it as my merits. Now, I'm not quite sure that's good for me."

"Tom," said Niven with apparent severity, though his eyes twinkled, "are you so foolish as to fancy that the men who run a line like this would take a hint from anybody? You climbed up yourself, but if ever I do have any influence I'll know how to use it. Still, we're not going to argue already. Come out. I've got a buggy waiting, and we're going to drive and talk in the woods all afternoon, and then have another dinner at the Hotel. To make it all complete Jordan's coming."

"I'm half afraid I couldn't stay that long," said Appleby, and Niven turned to Holway, who had joined them.

"You're coming right along. Holway has seen the skipper, and he knows better than refuse--him--anything."

They drove through the dusky shadows of the pines all the afternoon, and when evening came they and Jordan sat down to a very choice dinner in the room where they last met. Jordan, however, seemed leaner and grimmer than he had done that night, and his hair was grey, but there was no mistaking the pleasure in his face when he greeted them. Niven made him sit down at the head of a little table by an open window.

"That's your place, sir," he said. "I don't quite know what they're bringing us to eat, but it's not going to be as good as the canned beef you gave us the night you came across us in the _Champlain_."

He smiled curiously as, glancing round at the glittering glass and silver and the sumptuous decorations of the great dining-room, he remembered the little, stuffy cabin of the schooner that swung with the seas. All this was very pleasant, but he felt he had lost something that could never be regained since then. Appleby seemed to understand, for he nodded.

"There's a difference, Chriss," he said. "We shall never be quite the same again."

"A man can't have quite everything--and you've got the dollars now," said Jordan with a little twinkle in his eyes. "Well, I've made my blunders, like most other folks, but the one I made that night was my biggest one. Still, it was a kind of curious story you told me."

Niven laughed. "I've no doubt I did it badly--but there are times when I wish I was only a lad sailing north again sealing, and I fancy I shouldn't be a partner in a good business now if it hadn't been for a few things that voyage taught me."

While he spoke the dinner was brought in, and for a while they postponed their questions. Then as they sat by the open window looking out across the blue inlet towards the climbing pines and the distant snow Jordan glanced at his cigar.

"I've only had a dinner of this kind once before in my life, and you know who it was gave it me then," he said. "Now, I've a notion Donegal believed you all along."

"I wonder where he is now," said Niven. "I should like to have seen him."

Jordan's face grew grave, and he stretched out one hand pointing towards the north. "He's sleeping sound up there," he said.

Appleby bent his head. "I have not often met his equal--and we both owe him a good deal. How did it happen?"

"Stowing jibs," said Jordan quietly. "Wind turned loose on us sudden one night we were carrying everything, and she lay down with her lee rail in. Outer jib wouldn't run down, downhaul jammed, and Charley was clawing out on the bowsprit when the sail whipped over him. None of us saw what came next but Donegal, and when I had a glimpse of him he was hanging out from the foot-rope grabbing at Charley. Then she put her nose into a sea, and when she swung out of it there was nobody under the bowsprit. We'd gone straight over them."

Jordan stopped a moment, and his voice was a trifle hoarse when he went on again. "It was quite ten minutes before we could get the mainsail off her to wear her round, and a boat over, and an hour anyway before we hove her in again. They'd found nothing, and Charley couldn't swim, but Donegal wouldn't never have let go of his partner. He was that kind of a man."

Appleby nodded gravely, but nobody said anything further for several minutes, and then Niven asked, "Where's Stickine?"

"Coast trading. He was kind of saving. Put the dollars he'd scraped up into a little schooner, and it would astonish me if he wasn't making more of them. Montreal and his brother doing quite well too. Gone back to the carpentering and taking contracts for putting up mining flumes."

"Then there's only yourself, and the _Champlain_," said Niven.

Jordan sighed a little. "We had to part with her. Sealing's not what it used to be--too many gun-boats and too much government fussing--and the holluschackie are getting scarcer too. They'll have to try round the South Pole for them presently. Still, a man has got to live, and I'm figuring on a halibut-catching scheme. There's going to be dollars in it if we can raise enough of them to start us off with the proper outfit."

"Tell me all about it. I'm a business man," said Niven.

Jordan did so, but his face was a trifle anxious as he concluded. "I'm not quite sure if I can put it through. We've got to have a schooner, and it's where to get the last two or three thousand dollars that's worrying me. The banks don't seem to care about backing me."

Niven sat silent a moment or two. Then he said quietly, "Now, I've about that many dollars I'm getting very little for in the old country, and I would be glad to put them in your venture as a partner."

"And I've five or six hundred," said Appleby.

Jordan's face brightened, but he did not answer for a minute. "Well, I've no use for pretending I wouldn't be glad to have the dollars--but one has to do the square thing," he said. "The risks are going to be heavy, because until we get it all quite straight we may lose the catch quite often before we can put it on the market, and there's always chances of losing the schooner, while you'd have to take too much on trust. You don't know the ins and outs of this contract, and I couldn't figure them all out to you."

Niven laughed a little, and laid his hand on Jordan's shoulder. "I know the man who's going to put it through, and I could trust him with a good deal more than the dollars. We'll go round to Holway's, and fix it all up to-morrow."

It was late before Jordan left them, and Niven and Appleby, who walked with him a little way, stopped a moment as they went back to the hotel. On the one hand, sprinkled with big electric lights, the city climbed the rise, and they could see its maze of roofs and towering telegraph poles. On the other the inlet shone like silver under the moon, with the ivory shape of the liner in the foreground and three great ships riding to their anchors farther out. Niven smiled a little as he turned to his companion.

"One is your home, the other mine," he said. "Tom, you haven't told me whether you are still quite contented with the life you have chosen."

Appleby's face was grave, but his eyes shone a little. "It is a grim life--especially in the sailing ships--Chriss, though they are not all like the _Aldebaran_, but I still fancy it is the one that is best for me. After all, are there any things your money can buy you better than those which are given for nothing to every man at sea?"

THE END

_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._