Read Ebook: A Cadet of the Black Star Line by Paine Ralph Delahaye Varian George Illustrator

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Ebook has 101 lines and 8658 words, and 3 pages

Margaret was thrown into confusion, and Mr. Becket was taken all aback, but Captain John smiled and threw back his shoulders, as he gently answered:

"I should like nothing better, but her owners don't see it that way."

"Burgess, Jones & Company. She is the last of their four-masted ships that were built for the Far Eastern trade," said Captain John.

"Why, it is plain as the nose on your face," declared the headlong Arthur, who was taking full command of the situation. "Don't let her be turned into a coal barge, father. That is what they talk of doing with her after one more voyage. She can be made to pay her way with your brains back of her. Buy her to-morrow. I'll get you all the facts and figures. And one long voyage in her is what I need to make me as husky as David Downes."

Matters were moving too fast for the guests. Mr. Becket's face was fairly purple with suppressed emotions, and he could only pound the table in a dazed kind of way and mutter:

"Exactly what I tried to tell him. Exactly it. But I got hung on a dead centre."

Captain Bracewell raised his hand to command silence. He was anxious to pull Mr. Cochran out of an awkward situation, and did his best to make light of the discussion by saying:

"It is just a boy's fancy, sir. Don't mind him. He means well. We will just call it a bit of fun, and forget it. Besides, I'm asking no favors from anybody."

Captain John had risen to his feet, and was bending toward his host. Mr. Cochran looked up with frank admiration at the imposing figure which faced him, and returned:

"Arthur goes off at half-cock a good deal. But there is a grain or two of sense in him. Suppose we talk this matter over to-morrow, Captain. I am a business man, and you are pretty solidly ballasted yourself. I don't want to fling a lot of money into the sea, nor do you wish any position that comes to you as a whim."

But Arthur was not ready to dismiss his great idea, until he noticed that his mother's face was full of suffering and her dear eyes were moist with tears. He went around to her and kissed her cheek, as he asked what the trouble might be.

"I hope you can make Captain Bracewell happy," she whispered. "But I can't let you go to sea again so soon. You must not leave me now, when I feel as if you had been given back to me from the grave. You won't go, will you, if you can feel strong and well at home with us?"

The boy responded with impulsive tenderness:

The father was thinking as he watched them that it was worth a great deal to have his only son learn lessons of unselfishness; to see him more absorbed in the welfare of others than in his own interests. Mr. Becket said to Margaret, in what was meant for a whisper:

"The lad couldn't know our David very long without getting some of that help-the-other-fellow spirit. Our boy has always been studying what he could do for you and Captain John. He even has me on his mind these days."

Mr. Becket's whisper was heard the length of the table, and Arthur's father commented with a smile:

"I guess you are right, Mr. Becket, but why on earth didn't David let me know that the captain wanted a ship?"

"Because you blackguarded and scolded him out of his boots when he stuck to these friends of his, last year," bravely returned the aroused Mr. Becket. "And our boy don't crawl on his knees to no millionaires, potentates, or boojums. That's one reason."

"Please don't think we ever hinted the least thing to Mr. Arthur about our looking for a vessel. It is lovely to know that you think so much of grandfather. And Mr. Becket and I will try to make him understand that it was all a joke to-night. I can't bear to think of his taking it the least bit in earnest. We just can't have him down in the dumps again."

"Don't worry, Margaret," Arthur's mother responded, caressing the girl's shining hair. "Things will work out for the best somehow, for such a dear, brave child and such a splendid grandfather."

Captain John chuckled:

"Why, you are the girlie who was telling me all the way home that I must take it as a bit of fun. What has come over you?"

"I just can't help believing it is going to come true," she answered. "I guess we are two silly children. But will you try to coax David to ship with you?"

"So that is what is keeping you awake," he responded, very tenderly. "Nothing would be too good for the lad if he were in my vessel, you know that. But our chickens aren't hatched, and you'd better turn in, and thank God for all the blessings we have."

A few hours later Arthur Cochran rode down town with his father, explaining, by the way:

"The weeks at sea did me lots of good, I'll admit that. But another reason why I feel so much better is that I have quit worrying about myself. If you will give me enough to think about, I won't have time to bother with my weak chest and spindle legs. But it is a heap more important that I get Captain John ready for sea before David comes home. Wouldn't it be a glorious surprise for him?"

"Give me time to think it over, Arthur. Maybe Burgess, Jones & Company will be glad to do me a favor without making it necessary to buy a ship. Why, I own a fleet of them, come to think of it."

"I begin to think you are a chip of the old block, my son," said Mr. Cochran, not at all displeased. "Maybe I can see you through on this shipping deal. Come to my office at noon, after I have had time to send a man out to investigate."

Arthur was not letting the grass grow under his feet. He posted down to the wharf to find Captain Bracewell, and implored that busy stevedore:

"I want all the figures to show the cost of running a four-masted ship, wages, stores, repairs, and so on. Dig it up in a hurry, please, for I may be a ship-owner by afternoon. Let your roustabouts have a ten minutes' rest."

There was no such thing as heading Arthur off. He volleyed questions like a rapid-fire gun. No sooner had his flying pencil scrawled the last row of figures than he fled from the wharf. Noon found him waiting in the ante-room of his father's private offices, chewing his pencil stub and scanning many rumpled pages of calculations. Presently a clerk beckoned him, and the door of the inner office was closed behind the budding shipping merchant. An hour later he bobbed out with an excited air and announced to the confidential secretary:

"Mr. Cochran says to have room number eighteen fitted up as an office, if you please. I shall use it hereafter. I want the door lettered,

'ARTHUR L. COCHRAN, SHIP-OWNER.'"

A messenger found Captain Bracewell eating his dinner at home. Margaret was trembling as she noticed that the note was written on the office stationery of Stanley P. Cochran. Her grandfather was outwardly calm, as he read aloud:

CAPTAIN JOHN BRACEWELL:

"Listen to that, his daddy all over again," roared the ship-master. "I shall have to toe the mark now. Well, it's come true. It's come true, girlie. And our lad David did it all."

He knelt by the table, as if this were the first thing to be done, and Margaret was kneeling beside him as he gave thanks to the God in whom he had put his trust, afloat and ashore.

Three thousand miles away a lad in sailor blue was mending awnings on a liner's deck. He did not look happy as he plied the sail-needle with vicious jabs, while he thought, half aloud:

"What is the use of having friends if you can't be of any use to them? What good have I been to Captain John and Margaret? Always wanting to help, never doing a thing! I might have got him a ship if I hadn't hung fire so long. Now it's too late. I wish I had never set eyes on those Cochrans. I just amused them, because I was a kind of curiosity, I suppose."

It was a very different David Downes who whooped like a red Indian soon after he went off watch. After dancing along the deck with a cabled message in his fist, he sat down on the edge of his bunk to think things over. Slowly the fact of Captain John's great good fortune slipped into the background, and bigger and bigger loomed the certainty which he could not bear to face.

Then it came over him that he belonged where he had begun, in steam, in the Atlantic service. He was of a different age and breed of seaman from Captain John. Their ways must part. But was not any sacrifice worth while that would give him a chance to sail with Margaret? David was suddenly brought face to face with a new problem which had come into his life without his being aware of it. He must fight it out for himself.

THE CALL OF DUTY

In the spacious after-cabin, bright with the summer sun which flooded through the open skylights, Margaret was saying almost the last of her good-bys. Clusters and bouquets of flowers, sent by Mr. Cochran, senior, made every shelf and corner gay. Mrs. Cochran and he had made their farewell call and were gone ashore, but Arthur still lingered in the cabin. Beside him stood able seaman David Downes. The young owner of the departing ship was saying to the fair-haired girl:

"I can't stay more than a minute longer. My boat is alongside, and I must get back to my office. I'd like awfully well to go down the Bay with you, but--"

He hesitated, glanced at David and went on with an affectionate smile, which embraced both his friends:

"You may not see your big brother for a year, Miss Margaret. He deserves to have you all to himself to-day."

"Better change your mind and come back in the tug," said David. "This is your ship, you know. And Margaret will love to have you."

She smiled, with lips which slightly trembled, and there was unspoken sadness in her brave eyes, as she told them:

Arthur's gaze was wistful, but he answered brightly:

"And your owner is prouder of his master and of you than he is of his fine ship."

"Not to overlook the mate," exclaimed a hearty voice behind them, and Mr. Becket's head blazed grandly in a patch of sunshine, at the foot of the companion-way. "Beg your pardon, Mr. Cochran, but we are in the stream and your boatman wants to cast off. Any orders, sir?"

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