Chapter 4

"Father Regan, of course. He couldn't send the boys unless they wanted to go. But when they heard about the old house uncle made out of his ship, and the row-boats and the sailboat, and the bathing and fishing, they just jumped at the chance to go. And Jim says there is a fine place not far off, where Dud spent the season two years ago with some tip toppers, and he's counting on getting in with them again. So he is tickled all around. But I'm not caring about Dud or what he likes, so long as I've got you, Dan, I wouldn't want to go without you."

"Wouldn't you, kid?" asked Dan, softly, for, after all the troubles and perplexities of the day, his little chum's trusting friendship seemed very sweet to him.

"N-o-o-o!" answered Freddy, most decidedly. "But I sort of wish Brother Bart was not going. He'll keep me such a baby!"

"No, he won't. I'll see to that," said Dan, with a twinkle in his eye. "If there's any way of giving you a good time, I'll do it. And I won't let you get hurt again either,--no sir! I've had my scare about that. I'm going to look out for you right. It may be for the last time, but--"

"The last time," interrupted Freddy quickly. "Why will it be the last time?"

"I mean I may never have a chance at such a jolly holiday again," answered Dan, suddenly remembering his promise to Father Mack. "But we'll make this one a hummer. If Killykinick is half what I think it is, we'll make this chance a hummer you'll never forget."

VII.--A HOLIDAY START.

And the holiday proved to be a "hummer" from the very start. Everybody was in high spirits. Even Dud Fielding, with his nose happily reduced to its normal color and size, had lost his "grouch," and was quite himself again, in a sporting suit of English tweed, ordered from his tailors for "roughing it." Easy-going Jim was in comfortable khaki; so was little Fred; while Dan had been privately presented by the Brother wardrobian with two suits of the same,--"left by boys for the poor," good Brother Francis had whispered confidentially.

"I fill the bill then, sure," said Dan, with a cheerful grin.

"You do, but many a fine man has done the same before you," answered Brother Francis, nodding. "I've put a few more things in your trunk, Dan; take them and God bless you! I've cut off the marks so nobody'll be the wiser."

Brother Bart's wrinkled face wore a glow of pleasurable excitement as, after seeing the baggage off, he marshalled his holiday force on the college porch for the last words of command from his reverend chief.

"Give your orders now, Father; though God knows how I'll be able to keep this lot up to them. They are not to be killing and drowning themselves against my will and word."

"Certainly not," said Father Regan, with a smile. "Brother Bart is to be obeyed, boys, or you'll promptly be ordered home."

"And there is to be no roving off wid pirates and smugglers that may be doing their devilment along the shore," continued Brother Bart, anxiously.

"The government looks out for all that now," laughed Father Regan.

"I'm not so sure," said Brother Bart, who had grown up in a wild stretch of the Irish coast. "It's a wicked world, and we're going beyant the Lord's light that shines on us here."

"Not at all," was the cheering assurance. "Beach Cliff is only six miles away, and it has a little church where there is a Mass every Sunday."

"The Lord be praised for that anyhow!" said the good man, with a sigh of relief. "It's a great burthen that ye've put on my body and soul, Father. But I'll do me best, and, with God's help, I'll bring the four of them back safe and sound to ye. Now give us your blessing and we'll be off."

And very soon they were off indeed, speeding on to the busy wharf, scene of many a "lark" in Dan's boyish past. Here the great steamboat was awaiting them: for, although the route was longer and more circuitous, Father Regan had decided it best for his young travellers to make their journey by sea.

To Jim and Dud such a trip was no novelty; even Freddy had taken more than one holiday outing with Uncle Tom; but to Dan--Dan whose busy, workaday childhood had excluded even the delights of a cheap excursion--everything was wonderfully and deliciously new. He felt like one in a bewildering dream. As the great floating palace, all aglitter and aglow with splendors of paint and upholstery hitherto unknown, swung from her moorings out into the stream, Dan quite forgot the gentility of his surroundings and the elegant Dud Fielding at his elbow, and waved his hat with a wild "Hurrah" to half a dozen Wharf Rats who were fishing off the pier.

"Dan Dolan!" rose the shrill-voiced chorus, and six pairs of bare legs dangling over the water scrambled up to a stand. "Jing! if it ain't Dan Dolan,--Dan Dolan all diked up like a swell! Hi-yi-yi-yi, Dan! Where are you going, Dan?"

"Seashore, New England, Killykinick!" Dan shouted back, quite unconscious of the smiles and stares of the passengers. "Off for the summer! Hooray!"

"Hooray--hooray!" with a series of whoops and catcalls came back the Wharf Rat's farewells, echoing with such friendly memories of a rough past that Dan was struck speechless by the fierce contrasting voice in his ear.

"You darned dunderhead!" whispered Dud Fielding. "Can't you keep quiet in a decent crowd?"

"Eh?" said Dan in bewilderment.

"Don't you see everybody staring at us?" continued Dud, wrathfully. "To be shouting at dirty little beggars like those and disgracing us all!"

"Disgracing you?" echoed Dan.

"Yes," said Dud, still hot with pride and rage. "And there are the Fosters on the upper deck,--people I know. Come, Jim, let's cut off before they see us with this low-down chump."

And Dud led easy-going Jim to the other side of the boat.

"Low-down chump!" Unconscious as he was of any offense, Dan felt the scornful sting of the words, and his hot blood began to boil; but he remembered the "pricks and goads" he had resolved to bear bravely, and shut his lips tight together as Freddy stole a small hand into his own.

With the last "Hi-yi" the Wharf Rats had settled back to their occupation, and Freddy eyed them from the growing distance most favorably.

"Did you ever fish like that, Dan?" he asked with interest.

"Often," was the brief reply; for Dan was still hot and sore.

"Golly, it must be fun! And did you catch anything, Dan?"

"My dinner," answered Dan, grimly.

"Jing!" exclaimed Freddy, breathlessly. "That was great! When we get to Killykinick let us go out like those bare legged boys and catch our dinner, too."

And Dan laughed and forgot he was a "low-down chump" as he agreed they would catch dinners whenever possible. Then he and Freddy proceeded to explore the big boat high and low, decks, cabins, saloons, machinery wherever visible. Freddy, who had made similar explorations with Uncle Tom as guide, was quite posted in steamboat workings; but it was all new and wonderful to Dan, who had only dry book-knowledge of levers and cogs and wheels; and to watch them in action, to gaze down into the fiery depths of the furnace, to hear the mighty throb of the giant engine,--to see all these fierce forces mastered by rules and laws into the benignant power that was bearing him so gently over summer seas, held him breathless with interest and delight. Even the clang of the first dinner gong could not distract him from his study of cylinder and piston and shaft and driving-rod, and all shining mechanism working without pause or jar at man's command.

"Just as if they had sense," said Dan, thoughtfully,--"a heap more sense than lots of living folk I know."

"That's what Uncle Tom says," replied Freddy, to whom, in their brief holidays together, Uncle Tom, cheery and loving, was an authority beyond question. "He says they work by strict law and rule, and people won't. They shirk and kick. Jing! if these here engines took to shirking and kicking where would we be? But they don't shirk and kick against law. Uncle Tom says they obey, and that's what boys ought to do--obey. Gee! it's good we're not engines, isn't it, Dan? We'd blow things sky high.--Here's the second call for dinner," said Freddy, roused from these serious reflections by the sound of the gong. "We'd better move quick, Dan, or the ice-cream may give out."

"Can you have ice-cream,--all you want?" asked Dan.

"Well, no," hesitated Freddy, who knew what Dan could do in that line,--"not like we have at college. They dish it out other places a little skimp, but they'll give you a good supply of other things to make up."

Which information Dan soon found to be most pleasantly correct; and, though the glories of the long dining room, with its corps of low-voiced waiters, were at first a trifle embarrassing, and Brother Bart's grace, loudly defying all human respect, attracted some attention to his table, the boys did full justice to the good things set so deftly before them, and went through the bill of fare most successfully.

The black waiters grinned as the young travellers proceeded to top off with apple pie and ice-cream, combined in such generous proportions that Brother Bart warned them that the sin of gluttony would be on their souls if they ate another mouthful.

Then Freddy, sorely against his will, was borne off by his good old friend to rest, according to Brother Tim's last order; while Dan was left to himself to watch the boat turning into the shore, where a wharf loaded with truck for shipping jutted out into the stream; and one passenger--a sturdy, grizzled man in rough, brown hunting corduroy--leaped aboard followed by two fine dogs. Then the laboring engines, with puff and shriek, kept on their way; while Dan continued his investigations, and made friendly overtures to a big deck hand who volunteered to show the eager young questioner "below."

And "below" they went, down steep, crooked steps that led away from all the glitter and splendor above, into black depths, lit only by fierce glow of undying fires. Brawny, half-naked figures fed and stirred the roaring flames; the huge boilers hissed, the engines panted; but through all the darkness and discord came the measured beat of the ship's pulse that told there was no shirk or kick,--that all this mighty mechanism was "obeying."

And then, this dark sight-seeing over, Dan came up again into the bright, sunlit deck crowded with gay passengers chatting and laughing. Brother Bart was making efforts at conversation with an old French priest returning to his mission in the Canadian forests; Dud had introduced Jim to his fashionable friends, and both boys were enjoying a box of chocolates with pretty little Minnie Foster; Freddy was still "resting" in his stateroom.

All were unmindful of the dark, fiery depths below, where fierce powers were working so obediently to bear them on their happy, sunlit way, that was widening each moment now. The smiling shores, dotted with farms and villages, were stretching away into hazy distance; there was a new swell in the waves as they felt the heart-beat of the sea. It was all new and wonderful to Dan; and he stood leaning on the deck rail of a secluded corner made by a projecting cabin, watching the sunset glory pale over the swift vanishing shore, when he was suddenly startled by a deep voice near him that questioned:

"Worth seeing, isn't it?"

Dan looked up and saw the big grizzled stranger in corduroy gazing at the splendor of the western sky.

"Yes, sir," answered Dan. "It's great! Are we out at sea now?"

"Almost," was the reply. "Not in the full swell yet, but this is our last sight of land." He nodded to a promontory where the delicate lines of a lighthouse were faintly pencilled against the sunset.

"Jing!" said Dan, drawing a long breath, "it feels queer to be leaving earth and sun and everything behind us."

His companion laughed a little harshly. "I suppose it does at your age," he said. "Afterwards" (he stopped to light a cigar and puff it into glow),--"afterwards we get used to it."

"Of course," assented Dan, "because we know we are coming back."

"Coming back!" repeated the other slowly. "We are not always sure of that. Sometimes we leave the land, the light, behind us forever."

"Oh, not forever!" said Dan. "We would have to strike light and land somewhere unless we drowned."

"We don't drown," continued the stranger. "We do worse: we drift,--drift in darkness and night."

Dan stared. His companion had taken his cigar from his lips and was letting its glow die into ashes.

"Folks do drown sometimes," said Dan. "I tell you if you go round the bottom of this boat you'd see how we could drown mighty easily. Just a wheel or crank or a valve a mite wrong,--whewy! we'd all be done for. But they don't go wrong; that's the wonder of it, isn't it?" said Dan, cheerfully. "If everybody kept steady and straight as a steam-engine, this would be a mighty good world."

"No doubt it would," was the reply. "Are you not rather young to be facing it alone?"

"Oh, I'm not alone!" said Dan, hastily. "I'm off with a lot of other fellows for the seashore. We are college boys from Saint Andrew's."

"Saint Andrew's?" The stranger started so violently that the dying cigar dropped from his hold. "Saint Andrew's College, you say, boy! Not Saint Andrew's in--"

But a clear young voice broke in upon the excited question.

"Dan Dolan! Where are you, Dan? Oh, I've been looking everywhere for you!"

And, fresh and rosy from his long rest, Freddy Neville bounded out gleefully to Dan's side.

A low cry burst from the stranger's lips, and he stood staring at the boys as if turned into stone.

VIII.--A NEW FRIEND.

"Jing, you gave me a scare, Dan!" said Freddy, drawing a long breath of relief. "I thought you had dropped overboard."

"Overboard!" scoffed Dan. "You must think I'm a ninny. And you have been sleeping sure! Got to keep this sort of thing up all summer?"

"Oh, no, no!" said Freddy; "only for a few days,--until I get real well and strong; though Brother Bart will keep fussing over me, I know. Golly, I wish we had Uncle Tom along with us!"

"All right, is he?" asked Dan.

"Great!" replied Freddy, emphatically. "Doesn't baby you a bit; lets you row and swim and dive when you go off with him. Most as good as a real father."

"_Just_ as good, I guess," amended Dan.

"No," said Freddy, shaking his head. "You see, he has other work--preaching and saying Mass and giving missions--where I don't come in. He has to leave me at Saint Andrew's because he hasn't any home. It must be just fine to have a home that isn't a school,--a sort of cosy little place, with cushioned chairs, and curtains, and a fire that you can see, and a kitchen where you can roast nuts and apples and smell gingerbread baking, and a big dog that would be your very own. But you can't have a home like that when you have a priest uncle like mine."

"No, you can't," agreed Dan, his thoughts turning to Aunt Winnie and her blue teapot, and the little rooms that, despite all the pinch and poverty, she had made home.

"And Christmas," went on Freddy, both young speakers being quite oblivious of the big stranger who had seated himself on a camp stool in the shelter of the projecting cabin, and, with folded arms resting on the deck rail, was apparently studying the distant horizon,--"I'd like to have one real right Christmas before I get too big for it."

"Seems to me you have a pretty good time as it is," remarked Dan: "new skates and sled, and five dollars pocket money. There wasn't a fellow at the school of your age had any more."

"That's so," said Freddy; "but they went _home_. A fellow doesn't want pocket money when he goes home. Dick Fenton had only sixty cents; I lent him fifteen more to get a card-case for his mother. But he had Christmas all right, you bet: a tree that went to the ceiling (he helped to cut it down himself); all the house 'woodsy' with wreaths and berries and fires,--real fires where you could pop corn and roast apples. He lives in the country, you see, where money doesn't count; for you can't buy a real Christmas; it has to be homemade," said Freddy, with a little sigh. "So I'll never have one, I know."

Then the great gong sounded again to announce supper; and both boys bounded away to find the rest of their crowd, leaving the big stranger still seated in the gathering darkness, looking out to sea. As the boyish footsteps died into silence, he bowed his head upon his hands, and his breast heaved with a long, shuddering breath as if some dull, slumbering pain had wakened into life again. Then, in fierce self-mastery, he rose, stretched his tall form to its full height, and, ascending to the upper deck, began to pace its dimming length with the stern, swift tread of one whose life is a restless, joyless march through a desert land.

Meanwhile Brother Bart and his boys had begun to feel the roll of the sea, and to realize that supper had been a mistake. Jim and Dud had retired to their staterooms, with unpleasant memories of Minnie Foster's chocolates, and the firm conviction that they never wanted to see a candy box again. Brother Bart was ministering to a very white-faced "laddie," and thanking Heaven he was in the state of grace and prepared for the worst.

"The Lord's will be done, but I don't think any of us will live to see the morning. There must have been some poison in the food, to take us all suddint like this."

"Oh, no, Brother Bart!" gasped Freddy, faintly. "I've been this way before. We're all just--just seasick, Brother Bart--dead seasick."

Even Dan had a few qualms,--just enough to send him, with the sturdy sense of his rough kind, out into the widest sweep of briny air within his reach. He made for a flight of stairs that led up into some swaying, starlit region where there were no other sufferers, and flung himself upon a pile of life-preservers that served as a pillow for his dizzy head. Sickness of any sort was altogether new to Dan, and he felt it would be some relief to groan out his present misery unheard. But the glow of a cigar, whose owner was pacing the deck, suddenly glimmered above his head, and the big man in corduroy nearly stumbled over him.

"Hello!" he said. "Down and out, my boy? Here, take a swig of this!" and he handed out a silver-mounted flask.

"No," said Dan, faintly, "--can't. I've taken the pledge."

"Pooh! Don't be a fool, boy, when you're sick!"

"Wouldn't touch it if I were dying," said Dan. "I'm getting better now, anyhow. My, but I felt queer for a while! It is so hot and stuffy below. No more packing in on a shelf for me. I'll stick it out here until morning."

"And the others,--the little chap who was with you?" the stranger asked hastily. "Is he--he sick, too?"

"Freddy Neville? Yes, dead sick; but Brother Bart is looking out for him. Brother Bart is a regular old softy about Freddy. He took him when he was a little kid and keeps babying him yet."

"He is good to him, you mean?" asked the other, eagerly.

"Good? Well, I suppose you'd call it good. I couldn't stand any such fussing. Why, when Fred got a tumble in the gym the other day the old man almost had a fit!"

"A tumble,--a fall; did it hurt him much?" There was a strange sharpness in the questioner's voice.

"Pooh, no!" said Dan. "Just knocked him out a little. But we were all getting into trouble at Saint Andrew's, for vacation there is pretty slow; so Father Regan has sent us off to the seashore for the summer?"

"The seashore? Where?"

"Some queer place called Killykinick," answered Dan, who was now able to sit up and be sociable.

"Killykinick?" repeated his companion, in a startled tone. "Did you say you were going to Killykinick?"

"Yes," answered Dan. "Freddy's uncle or cousin or somebody died a while ago and left him a place there. Freddy has a lot of houses and money and things all his own. It's lucky he has. He isn't the kind to rough it and tough it for himself. Not that he hasn't plenty of grit," went on Freddy's chum, hastily. "He's as plucky a little chap as I ever saw. But he's been used to having life soft and easy. He is the 'big bug' sort. (I ain't.) So I'm glad he has money enough to make things smooth at the start, though his no-'count father did skip off and leave him when he was only five years old."

"His father left him?" repeated Dan's companion. "Why?"

"Don't know," answered Dan. "Just naturally a 'quitter,' I guess. Lots of menfolks are. Want a free foot and no bother. But to shake a nice little chap like Freddy I call a dirty, mean trick, don't you?"

"There might be reasons," was the hesitating rejoinder.

"What reason?" asked Dan, gruffly. "There ain't any sort of reason why a father shouldn't stick to his job. I hate a 'quitter,' anyhow," concluded Dan, decisively.

"Wait until you are twenty years older before you say that, my boy!" was the answer. "Perhaps then you will know what quitting costs and means. But you're an old chum for that little boy. I saw him with you down below. How is it that you're such friends?"

And then Dan, being of a communicative nature, and seeing no cause for reserve, told his new acquaintance all about the scholarship that had introduced him into spheres of birth and breeding to which he frankly confessed he could make no claim.

"I'm not Freddy's sort, I know; but he took to me somehow,--I can't tell why."

Yet as Dan went on with his simple, honest story, his listener, who, world-wise and world-weary as he was, knew something of the boyish nature that turns instinctively to what is strong and true and good, felt he could tell why Freddy took to this rough diamond of a chum.

Dan, in his turn, learned that his new acquaintance was called John Wirt; that he was off on a vacation trip, hunting and fishing wherever there was promise of good sport; that he had travelled abroad for several years,--had been to China, Japan, India, Egypt; had hunted lions and elephants, seen the midnight sun, crossed Siberian steppes and African deserts. From a geographical standpoint, Mr. Wirt's story seemed an open and extensive map, but biographically it was a blank. Of his personal history, past, present or future, he said nothing. Altogether, Dan and his new acquaintance had a pleasant hour on the open deck beneath the stars, and made friends rapidly.

"I wish you were going our way," said Dan, regretfully, as his companion announced that he was to get off at the first point they touched. "Brother Bart is going to granny us all, I know. If we had a real strong man like you around, he wouldn't scare so easily. And there is fine fishing about Killykinick, they say."

"So I have heard." The stranger had risen now, and stood, a tall shadow dimly outlined above Dan. "I--I--perhaps I'll drop in upon you. Isn't it time for you to turn in now?"

"No," answered Dan,--"not into that packing box below. I'm up here for the night."

"And I'm off before morning, so it's good-bye and good luck to you!"

And, with a friendly nod, Mr. John Wirt strode away down the darkened deck, leaving Dan to fling himself back upon his life-preservers, and wonder how, when, or where he had seen their new acquaintance before,--not at Saint Andrew's; for Mr. Wirt had been abroad, as he had said, ever since Dan entered the college; not at Milligans' or Pete Patterson's, or anywhere about his old home. Perhaps he had blacked his shoes or sold him a newspaper in some half-forgotten past; for surely there was something in his tone, his glance, his friendly smile that Dan knew.