The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Viking Blood, by Frederick William Wallace

THE VIKING BLOOD
FREDERICK WILLIAM WALLACE

THE VIKING BLOOD
A Story of Seafaring

By
FREDERICK WILLIAM WALLACE
Author of “Blue Water,” “The Shack-locker,” etc.

HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LIMITED TORONTO

Copyright, Canada, 1920
BY
THE MUSSON BOOK CO., LIMITED
Publishers, . . . Toronto.

TO
V. S. W.

There’s few who know the ocean road,

Its way by reef and bar:

It keeps its secret guarded well,

In league with sun and star;

But if you tramp it year by year,

And watch it wild and still,

Its heart will open unto you,

And lead you where you will.

The Sea Road.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

He was christened Donald Percival McKenzie, but his mother preferred to call him Percival. The father, however insisted on the “Donald” and demanded that it be given priority over whatever appellation the mother might desire to add to the rare old Highland surname of McKenzie.

Captain McKenzie received the news of his son’s arrival into the world just as his ship was leaving the coaling station at Cape Verde Islands, but his wife’s suggestion of “Percival” caused him to hold the ship to an anchor while he dashed off a letter protesting against the tacking of such a namby-pamby name on to a son of his. “‘Donald’ is the name I have set my heart on, Janet, and I won’t have the name of McKenzie defiled by any such English designation as ‘Percival’. I won’t have any Percy McKenzies in my family.” Then, to conciliate his wife, who, he felt, deserved some consideration, he added, “You may call him Percival also if you’ve set your mind on it, but remember, Donald comes first!” So Donald Percival McKenzie it was, and thus it is inscribed in the Register of Births for the City of Glasgow, in the County of Lanark, Scotland, in the year of our Lord, Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-six.

Though registered thus by the laws of church and state and in the mind of the father, yet the mother won her desire for a time and omitted the “Donald” when addressing, or referring to, her son. It was only during Captain McKenzie’s brief home visits between voyages that young Donald Percival discovered that he had another appellation which he was expected to answer to. This discovery became a most pleasing one when the boy advanced to those years of discretion when he might fraternize with his fellows on the aristocratic “Terrace” where he resided. Glasgow youngsters, inheriting antipathies through Scotch or Irish ancestry, scorned anything savoring of “English” and the name of “Percy” could only be applied to an “Englisher” or a boy so anglicized by his “Maw” as to be only worth giving a licking to wherever and whenever met. When one’s mother hails from Inverness and speaks the pure melodious English peculiar to that part of Scotland, it is difficult for a lad to disprove connection with southron antecedents—especially in the face of such circumstantial evidence as a name like Percy, and an accent free from rolling “r’s” and Scottish idioms.

This was what young McKenzie had to fight against. Even though he could scrape through the language test and deliver himself of a guttural “Och, awa!” and pronounce “loch” without calling it “lock,” yet the “Percy” damned him. He had attained the age of seven—a rather delicate boy, much petted and spoilt by his mother—when he rebelled. The juvenile denizens of the Terrace had jeered at him—calling him “Percy, dear!” and added injury to insult by throwing mud and profaning his white starched collar with unclean hands. “They called me a mammy’s boy,” he sobbed, “’n they said I was English, ’n they said English was no good ’cause they ran away from the Scotch at Bannockburn an’ Stirling Bridge. I’m not English, am I, mamma?”

“No, no, dear,” soothed the mother. “How dare those vulgar little scamps abuse my little pet! Don’t cry, my wee lamb! I shan’t let you go out and play with them any more——”

A renewed howl came from Donald Percival. “But I wanna play with them, mamma! I don’t wanna be kept in! It’s all your fault for calling me ‘Percy’! I don’t wanna be called Percy! I wanna be called Donal’ same as daddy calls me. And, mamma, please don’t call me Percy any more. I like Donal’ better!”

There had been several incidents of this nature, and Mrs. McKenzie was now forced to address her offspring publicly by his first name. But the other died hard and practically blasted young Donald’s life in the locality in which he lived. Only when the family removed to a distant neighborhood did the youngster feel free to begin life with a clean sheet.

There is a psychology in nomenclature which reflects the characters of the parents. “Percival” aptly described that of Mrs. McKenzie. As plain Janet McKinnon she grew up in the bucolic atmosphere of a small Invernessshire farm, where she had, at an early age, to help her mother milk cows, clean byres, plant and gather potatoes. In summer, she ran around barefoot; in winter she wore heavy boots and homespun stockings and red flannel petticoats. The farm was a poor one and the McKinnon family was numerous and hungry. Janet at sixteen was sent out to “service” as a maid-of-all-work in the home of a Glasgow baillie.

The baillie had made some “siller” in the scrap-iron business and hankered after the desirable municipal eminence of Lord Provost of Glasgow. As he and his wife were rather crude personages, he realized that some training in deportment and society mannerisms was necessary, and his establishment became something of a stamping ground for professors of dancing and deportment, English governesses and impecunious connections of artistocratic families. Janet, the maid, absorbed much of the atmosphere with which she was surrounded and unconsciously aped a great deal of what she saw being dinned into the baillie and his kindred.

“Bonny Janet McKinnon”—good-hearted, healthy, quick-witted, and a pretty figure of a lass, though rather proud and vain—followed the baillie in his steps up the social ladder, and while a domestic in the future Lord Provost’s house, met handsome, rollicking Alec McKenzie, chief officer of the Sutton Liner Ansonia in the New York trade.

CHAPTER TWO

Janet made Alec McKenzie a good wife. She supplied the ambition and aggressiveness which her husband lacked. No one could say he lowered himself by marrying Janet McKinnon, for she was quick to realize her husband’s assets in the way of family connections and genuine ability, and she carried herself as if she were the accepted niece, by marriage, of the Laird of Dunsany. Other mates’ wives called on her, more out of curiosity than kindness, but she would have none of them and treated them coldly. Her demeanor impressed the visitors, as it had already impressed the landlady, and the latter bruited the story that her lodger was the daughter of a “Hielan’ Chief—somewhat rejuced in circumstances.” Mrs. McKenzie did not deny the story; she rather accepted it and even hinted at it in casual conversation with gossipy callers.

Alec was a first-class chief officer, but that wasn’t good enough for Janet. She longed for the day when she could be referred to as “Mrs. McKenzie—wife of Captain McKenzie of the S.S. So-and-so,” and she worked skilfully to that end. After much manœuvering, she struck up an acquaintanceship with Mrs. Duncan, wife of the marine superintendent of the Sutton Line, and never missed an opportunity to impress upon that simple lady the fact that Alec was a nephew of Sir Alastair McKenzie, and brother to David McKenzie the ship-owner on Bothwell street.

Though McKenzie longed for promotion, yet he was cursed with a sailor’s bashfulness in seeking office, and of his own volition he would make no move which would cause his skipper to eye him askance as a man to be watched. He had known over-ambitious mates who had been “worked out” of the Line by superiors who felt that their positions were imperilled by such aspiring underlings, and he abhorred the thought of being classed as an “owner licker.” But Janet had no such scruples. She was out to speed the day, and before she had been a year married, she had called on her late employer, Baillie Ross, and sought his interest in Alec’s favor. Ross was climbing in municipal politics and had recently been elected a director of the Sutton Line, and he appreciated Janet’s efforts to “rise in the warl’.” At the first opportunity, he casually mentioned to the Managing Director of Suttons’ that they had “a maist promisin’ young officer in Mr. McKinzie, chief mate o’ the Ansonia. He’s a nephew o’ Sir Alastair McKinzie an’ a brither tae David McKinzie—the risin’ ship-broker. He wad mak’ a fine upstaundin’ Captun fur wan o’ yer boats some day, and I wad like tae see him get on!”

The Managing Director was wise in his day and generation and made a note of McKenzie’s name, but he was too much of a Scotch business man to promote officers unless they had ability. Captain Duncan was called in one day and engaged in casual conversation by the manager. “What do you know of McKenzie, chief officer of the Ansonia?” Duncan had been primed by his wife. “A fine smert officer, sir,” answered the marine superintendent. “Keeps a nate shup and always attends to his wark.”

“Drink?”

“No, sir! I’ve never heard tell o’ him bein’ a man that used liquor.”

“How does he stand in seniority?”

“There’s twa or three mates ahead o’ him in length o’ service, but nane ahead in smertness. He’s well connectit, sir. Nephew tae Sir Alastair McKenzie and he’s merrid on a Hielan’ Chief’s dochter—a fine bonny leddy, sir!”

The Managing Director turned over a fyle of papers.

“McCallum, master of the Trantonia, has knocked the bows off his ship in going out of Philadelphia and it has cost us a lot of money. When the Ansonia comes in this time, you can find a new chief officer for her. We’ll sack McCallum and give McKenzie command of the Trantonia.”

Duncan told his wife the news that evening over the tea table and that worthy lady bustled over with the tidings to Janet. “Mrs. McKenzie,” she gasped, blowing and puffing as she flopped down in Janet’s parlor-bedroom. “Jeck cam’ hame th’ nicht an’ tells me yer husband’s tae be made captun o’ th’ Trantonia! Ye’ll can ca’ yersel’ Mistress Captun McKenzie efter this!”

Janet felt like embracing her visitor, but restrained her delight and murmured. “So kind of you to come over and tell me, Mrs. Duncan. I appreciate your thoughtfulness. I must write to-night and inform his uncle, Sir Alastair, of the promotion”—the latter was a white fib for Mrs. Duncan’s benefit—“he’ll be pleased, I’m sure.”

When Alec arrived home, he was delighted with his good fortune even though the Trantonia was one of the smallest and oldest steamers in the Line and had long been relegated to the cargo trade. But she was a ship, and size made no difference in the status of ship-masters. The pay—seventeen pounds per month—would enable them to take up house. Everything was glorious and Alec marvelled at his good luck in being promoted ahead of mates senior to him in service, and he was not above voicing regrets for the unfortunate officers who suffered through his advancement.

“Poor old Johnson,” he said. “Been due for a command these ten years. This will break his heart. Moore is ahead of me and should have got the next vacancy, for he’s a smart, able man. And old McCallum, whose shoes I jump into. I’m awfully sorry for him, for he’s got a large family and nothing laid by. He’ll have to go mate again in his old age or take a job as watchman around the docks. It’s cruel hard, but this is the mill of the British Merchant Service these days. We jump ahead over the bodies of the poor devils who slip on the ladder, and God help those who slip!”

Janet did not share his sympathies and felt rather annoyed. “Why should you fret about them? They wouldn’t worry about you. Now, let’s go and look for a house, dear. There’s a lovely three-room-and-kitchen to let in Ibrox, which is a nice neighbourhood and many Captains live there.” She did not enlighten him as to how he got his promotion.

With Janet spurring him on, McKenzie rose from command to command. For three years he ran the gamut of the Company’s old crocks until, when Donald Percival was born, he was master of a big five-thousand tonner in the River Plate trade and drawing a salary of twenty pounds per month.

McKenzie was happy then, and would have been quite content to remain as master of a Sutton freighter doing the run from Glasgow to the Plate. It was an easy fine-weather trade and he was drawing twenty a month, and occasionally making a pound or two in commissions. There was only his wife and Donald to support, and he had a comfortable home in Ibrox—three rooms and kitchen on the second flat, with hot and cold water, and a vestibule door off the stair landing—a real snug spot. At sea, he was not over-worked, having a purser to write out manifests and bills of lading, and he had plenty of time to read and smoke and take it easy. But with the coming of Donald Percival, Janet’s ambition expanded. “Percival must have a nurse,” she wrote to her husband, “and there are several expenses to be met in connection with our darling boy. You must get out of the cargo trade and into the passenger ships, dear. Mrs. Davidson tells me her husband is getting thirty pounds a month as captain of the Zealandia in the Canadian emigrant service. You must think of your connections. I shudder when I imagine you coming up from Buenos Ayres with your ship full of smelly cattle and sheep ... the passenger ships are more genteel ... the doctor’s bill is quite heavy, dear, and I have retained the services of a good nurse, as I do not feel equal to housework yet and Percival requires much care and attention....”

His wife’s letter contained a memorandum of the expenses attendant upon the ushering of Donald Percival into this mundane sphere, and it caused McKenzie to break out into a cold sweat. “Raising kids is a devilish expensive business,” he confided to the mate, who had “raised” six. “This youngster of mine stands me something like sixty pounds!” “Saxty poonds?” gasped Mr. McLeish. “Losh, mon, but yer mistress mun be awfu’ delicate! Mistress McLeish brings them tae port ivery year an’ five quid covers the hale business.... Saxty poonds for yin bairn? I c’d raise a dizzen for that amoont o’ siller. Ye’ll need tae be lucky, Captun, an’ fall across some disabled shups yince in a while if ye’re plannin’ tae have a family. Saxty poonds? Ma conscience!”

It was through a streak of God-given luck that the sixty pounds was paid, and Donald could thank the Fates for sending an Italian emigrant ship with a broken tail-end shaft across the path of his worried Daddy. McKenzie picked her up in a gale of wind south of Madeira, and he had his boats out and a hauling line aboard her ahead of a hungry Cardiff tramp who had been standing-by for eight hours waiting for the weather to moderate. “Sixty pounds has to be earned,” muttered McKenzie in his beard, “and there’s no Welsh coal-scuttle going to prevent me from getting it.” After a strenuous time, and parting hawser after hawser, McKenzie plucked the Italian into Madeira, and the salvage money that came to him afterwards ensured his son’s future as a free-born citizen.

The incident was used by Janet as a stepping-stone to her ambitions. After the salvage money had been awarded, she chased her husband “up to the office” and made him interview the Managing Director and ask for a command in the passenger trade. The official listened courteously to McKenzie’s plea (dictated by Janet) and as Suttons had benefitted considerably by the Captain’s picking up the helpless Italian, the promotion was forthcoming. With a sigh of regret, McKenzie carted his belongings from the comfortable River Plate freighter to the master’s quarters on the Ansonia—the old ship he had served in as chief officer.

The Ansonia was not the smart flyer of his younger days, but she still carried passengers. Second cabin and continental steerage thronged her decks outward from the Clyde to Boston, and four-footed passengers occupied the same decks homeward. Those were the days of the cheap emigrant fares—when the dissatisfied hordes of Central Europe were transported to the Land of Liberty for three pounds fifteen—and the Ansonia would ferry them across in eleven days. McKenzie drove her through sunshine and fog, calm or blow, and took chances. There was no money in slow passages at the cut-rates prevailing, and Alec often wished he were jogging to the south’ard in his nine-knot freighter with but little to worry him. In the Ansonia, the first grey streaks came in his blonde hair, and the lines deepened around his mouth and eyes.

Janet was happy for a time, but Suttons had better and faster ships than the one her husband was commanding. Their skippers were getting more money and were able to maintain “self-contained villas” and keep a servant. The return cargo of cattle which was the Ansonia’s paying eastward freight offended Janet’s sensibilities. She did not care to have Mrs. Sandys—wife of the master of the Sutton “crack” ship—asking her at a select “Conversazione” or “high tea”—“How many head of cattle did your husband lose last voyage?” or “I don’t suppose you visit your husband’s ship, Mrs. McKenzie. Those cattle boats are simply impossible!”

Janet, in her younger days, was not above laboring in odoriferous cattle byres, but, with her exalted station in life, the mere thought of the Ansonia’s cluttered decks and the honest farm-yard aroma which pervaded her and could be smelt a mile to loo’ard on a breezy day, gave her a sinking feeling and dampened her social ambitions.

She felt that she had exhausted all her “string pulling” resources, so she applied herself to imbuing her husband with more aggressiveness. Though passionately fond of his wife, yet there were times when McKenzie felt that he was being hounded ahead. Every cent he earned was spent in what his wife called “style,” and what Alec called “dog.” Janet dressed expensively and did much entertaining, and young Donald Percival was petted, spoiled, and cared for in a manner far beyond the rightful limits of a master mariner’s pay.

“Make yourself popular with the passengers, dear,” counselled his wifely mentor, “and drive your ship. Suttons like fast passages—”

“Aye,” interrupted Alec somewhat bitterly, “but they don’t like accidents. You know what happened to poor Thompson of the Syrania? Driving his ship in a fog to make fast time he cut a schooner in half and stove his bows in. Suttons lost a pile of money over that, and Thompson got the sack and is black-listed. His ticket was taken from him and he barely escaped being tried by an American court for manslaughter. I saw the poor chap in Boston this time, and what d’ye think he was doing? Timekeeping for a stevedore firm and getting ten dollars a week! A man who had commanded an Atlantic greyhound!”

Janet listened impatiently. “Oh, that was just his ill-fortune. I heard that he was in his bunk when the accident happened—”

Her husband made a gesture of mild irritation. “Good heavens, Janet! A man must sleep sometime,” he said. “Thompson had been on the bridge for sixty hours and was utterly played out. But that made no difference. It was his fault. He was driving her full speed in a fog and that’s where they got him—even though Suttons were driving him with their unwritten instructions—‘Be careful with your ship, Captain, but we expect you to make good passages!’ Drive your ship, but look-out if anything happens to her! That’s the English of that!”

By persistent urging, Janet’s exhortations had effect. McKenzie hounded the old Ansonia back and forth along the western ocean lanes and grew more grey hairs and deeper lines on his face with the worry and anxiety of long vigils on her bridge staring into the clammy mists through which his ship was storming. With a chief engineer who loved her wonderful old compound engines and who was willing to drive them, McKenzie commenced clipping down the Ansonia’s runs until one day she raced into Boston harbor an hour ahead of her best record twelve years before, and two days ahead of a rival company’s crack ship, which had left Glasgow at the same time.

The Boston newspapers, heralding the feat and containing a cut of Captain McKenzie and the ship, were forwarded to head office by the Boston agents. The Managing Director was delighted over the defeat of the rival company’s crack ship, for the American papers played it up strong, with two-column, heavy type head-lines and exaggerated description. After perusal, the canny Scotch manager gave some thought to McKenzie—the Yankee reporter dilated on the sub-head, ‘Scotch baronet’s nephew commands Sutton record breaker,’ (Alec had never opened his mouth about the relationship)—and he began to consider him seriously as master for the Sutton New York-Glasgow express steamship Cardonia.

A wealthy American, returning to the States after a lease of Dunsany Castle, unconsciously gave Alec the promotion which the manager had considered and postponed. The American was rich and fussy, and when booking his passage, had demanded to do so through the manager. “I want a suite amidships, sir, ’n I want tew travel in a ship that kin travel along, as I ain’t none too good a sailor. I want to sail with a skipper that’ll make her travel some. ’N bye-the-bye, I saw by a Boston paper that one of yewr skippers is related to Sir Alastair McKenzie. I leased the old boy’s castle for a while ’n a fine old bird he is. I’d like mighty fine tew cross the pond with this here McKenzie if he’s on a fast packet, but ain’t he on one of those twelve-day hookers to Boston?”

The manager had made up his mind. A man with McKenzie’s connections would bring lucrative business and be popular in the New York trade. The other masters in line for promotion would have to wait. “Captain McKenzie was in the Ansonia—one of our intermediate ships—but we have now placed him in command of our New York Express steamship Cardonia and we can fix you up splendidly in her.” The American booked passage, and McKenzie commanded the Cardonia.

With the promotion came a substantial increase in salary and Janet felt that her ambitions were realized—for a time at least. New worlds to conquer would suggest themselves bye-and-bye. The flat in the Terrace was given up, and a somewhat pretentious eight-roomed red sandstone villa in a suburban locality was rented, expensively decorated and furnished, and Mrs. McKenzie, with Donald Percival and a capable Highland “general,” moved in and laid plans for attaining the rank of first magnitude in the firmament of the local social stars.

CHAPTER THREE

Donald Percival McKenzie was eight years old when the red sandstone villa became his habitation. He was glad to leave the Terrace where they formerly lived as his life in that locality, as far as relations with lads of his own age were concerned, had been none too happy. The migration to Kensington Villa, as the red sandstone eight-roomer was called, was accompanied by a determined ultimatum from young McKenzie that his mother drop the name “Percival” altogether and call him “Donald” in future. As the ultimatum was presented with considerable howling and crying and threats of atrocious behavior, the mother felt that she would have to make the concession.

With this bar to congenial juvenile fraternization removed, Donald felt free to begin life on a new plane. The youthful residents of the suburb he now lived in were “superior.” They did not run around barefooted in summer, nor wear “tackety” or hobnailed boots in winter. Not that Donald scorned either of these pedal comforts. Bare feet were fine and cool and “tackety” boots gave a fellow a grand feeling of heftiness in clumping around the house, in kicking tin cans, and in scuffling up sparks through friction with granolithic sidewalks. Though superior in mode of living and dress compared with the less favored lads of Donald’s former habitation, yet his new chums were very much akin to the latter in their scorn and hatred for anything savoring of “English,” and Donald hadn’t been in the neighborhood two days before he had to prove his citizenship in fistic combat with a youthful Doubting Thomas.

The other lad was bigger and older than Donald and had the name of being a fighter. He gave young McKenzie a severe drubbing and the latter had to go home with his clothes torn and his nose bleeding. The mother was furious and intended to see the other boy’s parents about it, but Donald wouldn’t allow her to do so. Instead, he remained home for an hour or two, changed into a garb less likely to spoil or hinder the free swing of his arms, and then slipped out to have another try at defending his name. Once again, Donald, in pugilistic parlance, “went to the mat for the count,” but in rising he announced his intention of coming back at his fistic partner later—“after I take boxing lessons an’ get my muscle up.” Donald’s determination, and possibly the threat, had considerable effect upon Jamie Sampson, who immediately made conciliatory advances. “I don’t want tae hit ye any more,” he said. “Ye’re a wee fella’—”

“Am I Scotch?” queried Donald aggressively.

“Shair, ye’re Scoatch!” Jamie admitted heartily—adding, “And I’ll punch any fella’s noase that says ye’re no. Let me brush ye doon, Donal’!”

Through the exertion of the “fecht” Donald caught a cold and was laid up for two weeks, but he felt that it was worth it as he had gained the friendship of Jamie Sampson—“the best fighter on the Road, mamma, and you should see how he can dunt a ba’ with his heid!” Donald’s description of Jamie’s prowess in using his skull for propelling a foot-ball caused Mrs. McKenzie some pain at the language used, and to her husband she said, “Donald must go to school soon, but we must send him to a place where he will learn to talk nicely. I think we’ll send him to Miss Watson’s private school. She’s English and very particular.”

Captain McKenzie looked thoughtfully at his son and sighed. “He’s not very strong,” he murmured, “but he’s got spirit if he hasn’t got stamina. Fancy him going for that big lad again after getting a licking! Aye, aye, Janet, he’s a hot-house plant, but maybe he’ll grow out of it if we’re careful.”

Petted and coddled by both parents; seldom rebuked or disciplined, young Donald was inclined to be “babyish” and somewhat arbitrary. He was a rather delicate child—a not unusual exception to the law of eugenics where both parents were ruggedly healthy—and his frequent sicknesses kept him much at home and in the society of his mother. He was clever beyond his years and had mastered “A, B, C’s” and “pot-hooks and hangers” prior to his fifth birthday, while at seven, he could read and write in a manner superior to most thick-skulled Scotch youngsters of ten. He showed surprising evidences of artistic talent at an early age, and the blank cover pages and flyleaves of most of the books in the McKenzie library were adorned with pencil drawings of railway locomotives and ships—mostly ships. Captain McKenzie seldom arrived home from a voyage but what he had to pass critical comment upon his son’s artistic conceptions of the Cardonia ploughing the seas in every manner of weather imaginable. There would be the Cardonia driving through a veritable cordillera of cresting combers—billows which caused the Captain to shudder involuntarily and declare that they were so wonderfully realistic that “he could feel the sprays running down his neck when he looked at them!” The Cardonia would again be presented in odious comparison with a rival company’s ship, and the latter was always dwarfed in size and far astern. In Donald’s eyes, the Cardonia was superior to anything afloat—even the crack Liverpool greyhounds of the day were mere tug-boats compared to her.

Occasionally other ship-masters would accompany Captain McKenzie home to dinner when his ship was in port, and these were red-letter days for Donald. After dinner, the seafarers would retire to the drawing-room and, with pipes or cigars alight and seated before the grate fire, the talk would inevitably drift to ships and shipping. With ears open and drinking in the conversation, Donald would be seated on a cushion in front of the blaze, revelling in the gossip, and unconsciously absorbing the spirit which, for ages, has set the feet of Britain’s youth a-roving o’er the long sea paths.

Mrs. McKenzie would catch the look of rapt attention on her son’s face and with the long foresight of a mother’s mind she would realize that such talk was not good for a boy to hear if he were to be kept to home and home pursuits. Besides, she had a fear of the sea—a fear which was growing on her with time, and only her husband’s monthly home-comings lifted an unknown dread from her heart which returned with his “good-byes.” Though ambitious, proud, extravagant and somewhat callous where the welfare of others was concerned, yet she adored her husband and her son, and if put to the choice, would gladly relinquish her social aspirations for their sakes.

When the wild winter gales raged on the Atlantic and ships were posted as missing or came in with decks swept, Mrs. McKenzie had her share of dreadful fears, as have all seamen’s wives at these times, but her husband had been so consistently fortunate that she almost believed him to be invulnerable to ocean’s caprices. True, there were occasions when the news of the loss of a neighbor’s husband at sea would cause her to frame resolutions to save for such a contingency, but ambition would dominate these good intentions and she would console or deceive herself with the thought that “Alec is young yet. He’s never had an accident, and we’ll save when Donald is through college.”

To her perverted mentality, accidents could happen to others, but they couldn’t happen to Alec. She preferred to think of the sea-captains who had safely dodged the wrath of the sea and who had retired to snug stone villas in sea-side towns where they took their ease growing geraniums and roses and acknowledging the whistle or flag salutes of brother masters in active service as they passed by. On her lonely couch, she dreamed of the future days when Alec would retire from the sea for all time; when she would have him always with her, and when young Donald Percival—man grown—would be a coming Glasgow architect, designing structures destined to be the admiration of all eyes.

In conning over her lifetime so far, Janet felt a great pride in her accomplishments. From the “but and ben” of a poor Highland farm she had travelled far, and to her credit it must be said that she had worked and studied hard to keep pace with her social progress. Her humble origin and the menial service of her pre-marital days had been skilfully covered, and her quick and active mind readily absorbed the “correct” conversation, deportment and pursuits which should necessarily accompany the social status of a “Captain’s wife whose husband was in the New York passenger service, and whose salary was four hundred pounds a year!”

Since her marriage she had dropped home ties. She felt that she owed her parents but little. They had brought her into the world, fed and clothed her for a few years and were glad when she had gone into “service” in Glasgow. She was off their hands then, and ten brothers and sisters more than filled her place at home. Neither her father nor mother could write, and the only time she saw her family again was when they arrived in Glasgow en route to Canada. They were now out on a homestead in “Moose Jaw, Chicago, Sacramento or some such outlandish place,” and she had heard nothing from them since they emigrated.

Baillie Ross had attained the coveted Lord Provostship, but with the honors of the office, he had become unapproachable to Janet. David McKenzie was flying his own house-flag on several sailing-ships, but he had discouraged advances by cutting Captain and Mrs. McKenzie “dead” on the few occasions during which they came face to face. “To the devil with him!” laughed Alec on the first non-recognition. “I can get along without him. His name is a curse in the mouths of sailormen and his ships are notorious as ‘work-houses’ and ‘starvation packets.’ Better not to claim acquaintance with such a brother. He was never anything to me anyhow!”

Alec had written to his uncle upon one occasion—just a friendly letter telling of his progress at sea (he was in the Cardonia then), but Sir Alastair had answered curtly, stating that “David had informed him of his (Alec’s) doings and he didn’t care to hear any more about them!” Alec read the letter thoughtfully, and mentally pictured the story David would spin to the Baronet. With a bitter smile, he threw the letter in the fire and wiped both his brother and his uncle forever from his affections.

Thus, unencumbered or blessed with relations, the McKenzies ploughed their own furrow and lived happily in their own select sphere. Donald went to the private school and showed exceptional brilliancy at his books, even though his tuition was interrupted often by spells of ill-health. His frequent sicknesses worried the mother, until a famous Glasgow specialist had examined the lad and given his verdict. “He’s as sound as a bell, madam, but he has a cauld stomach. Keep his feet warrm and dinna gie him a lot of sweet trash to eat. Dinna coddle him. Let him rin the streets—it’s the life of a laud rinning and jeuking aboot—and by the time he’s twalve or fourteen he’ll be as tough as a louse and as hard tae kill!” Couched in homely Doric, the advice of the great Doctor Chalmers—famous throughout Great Britain for his skill and common-sense prescriptions—assuaged Janet’s fears and opened up a desirable vista to Donald Percival.

Captain McKenzie’s interpretation of the great physician’s advice was to insist on Donald being sent to a public school. “Let him get along with real boys, Janet,” he maintained. “He’s ten years old now and should be able to take care of himself. If you coddle him too much, he’ll be a namby-pamby baby instead of a live boy—”

“But think of the rough characters he’ll meet?” objected his wife.

“He’ll have to meet them sometime and the sooner the better. He isn’t going to be a monk that you should want to keep him so inviolable. Now, Janet, take him away from that kindergarten he’s attending and put him in the Gregg Street Public School right away.” Captain McKenzie was determined, and next day Janet took her ewe-lamb to the public school in a cab and waited on the head master.

That worthy pedagogue assured Mrs. McKenzie that her hopeful would be well looked after and that his morals would not necessarily be contaminated by association with his scholars, and he mentally wondered how it was that all mothers imagined their own children were lambs and those of others, wolves and jackals. Twenty years of driving the rudiments of knowledge into the thick and stubborn skulls of Scotch youngsters had made him cynical, and he looked upon Donald as another mild-looking angel with probable devilish propensities.

Young McKenzie was given an examination to determine the grade or class he was fitted for, and surprised the examiner by his general intelligence. He was then taken and enrolled on the register of the Fifth Standard, and a saturnine male teacher gave him a number and a desk which he had to share with a shock-headed urchin who wore a blue woollen “ganzey” and “tackety” boots. Shock-head glanced over Don’s black velvet suit and white collar with ill-concealed disdain and, having taken the measure of his desk-mate, inquired huskily, “Can ye fight?”

On Donald not deigning to answer this “rude, rough boy,” Shock-head felt encouraged to try the newcomer’s spirit by a lusty jab in the ribs with his elbow. Young McKenzie returned the prod with interest, which caused Shock-head to grunt and make a swing with his fist. The eagle-eyed teacher spied the movement and haled the aggressor to the floor. Producing a snakey-looking leather strap from his pocket, Mr. Corey took a great deal of the belligerency out of Shock-head by administering six stinging blows with the strap on the culprit’s outstretched palm. “Now, sir, go to your seat and leave the new boy alone!”

Shock-head never made a whimper, but returned to his seat and endeavored to cool his injured palm by spitting and blowing on it. Such hardihood appealed to Donald and he whispered in the parlance he was supposed to eschew, “You’re a gey tough yin!” The other, still blowing, nodded and whispered with unmoved lips, “Ah’ve taken twinty swipes an’ he couldny make me greet!”

At this juncture the bell for “minutes” or recess was tolled and Donald filed out in company with Shock-head, who evidently bore no malice.

“Whit’s yer name, new fella’?”

“Donald McKenzie! What’s yours?”

“Joak McGlashan! Whaur d’ye leeve?”

“Maxwell Park! Where do you live?”

“Thurty-seevin M’Clure street an’ up three stairs. Whit does yer faither wurrk at?”

“He’s a sea captain—in the Sutton Line!” declared Donald proudly. The other paused and looked at him in surprise. “Is he? Whit boat is he on?” There was curiosity in his tone.

“The Cardonia!”

McGlashan made an exclamation of pleased astonishment. “My! but that’s funny,” he said. “Ma faither’s bos’n on the Cardonia an’ he’s great pals wi’ your auld man. They get on fine thegither. Jist think o’ that noo! Is she no th’ fine shup th’ Cardonia? Did ye ever see th’ bate o’ her?” And the two boys were chums instantly.

Mrs. McKenzie came down at four and took Donald home in a cab. “And how did you get on, dear?” she asked—nervously glancing at the noisy mob of school children who were lingering around to watch “the toff gaun hame in a cab!”

“Fine, mamma, fine! I’ve got a chum already—Joak McGlashan—and his papa’s bos’n on the Cardonia! He says his pa’s great pals with my old man!”—(Mrs. McKenzie gasped)—“and mamma, Joak is a gey tough yin!”—(Another gasp)—“he can stand twenty swipes on the hand from the teacher’s strap without bubblin’! Aye, an’ he’s going to put a horse-hair on his hand next time he gets punished and he’ll split Mister Corey’s strap to bits. I’m going to bring Joak out to tea some time soon”—(the mother shuddered)—“and he’s going to learn me to stand on my hands and skin the cat and sklim a lamp-post!” At the mention of this contingency and the terms used in naming certain athletic accomplishments, Mrs. McKenzie reached for her smelling salts and felt that the carefully built fabric of years was crumbling.

To her husband that night, Janet said dolefully, “I’m afraid Donald is going to lose all his gentility and good manners at that common school. He has chummed up already with a Jock McGlashan who says that his father is a great ‘pal’ of yours—a boatswain or something on your ship—”

McKenzie laughed. “Oh, yes!—McGlashan! Well! He’s a good honest sort of a fellow and he’s sailed with me a good many years. It won’t hurt Donald to be democratic. When I was a young chap I ate and slept and shared clothes and tobacco with fellows who are quartermasters with me now, and good chaps they are too. Don’t bring our boy up to believe he’s better than anybody else. If you do, he’ll be like a young bear—all his troubles before him.”

“But Donald wishes to bring this McGlashan boy up here to play with him!” protested Janet. “Just think of the manners of M’Clure street being introduced here!”

The other smiled and patted his wife’s hand. “Don’t worry, dear. If Donald wants young McGlashan to play with him here, let him do so. Better to have McGlashan here than have Donald go down to M’Clure street. He won’t learn any more deviltry from my bos’n’s kid than he would from young Sampson or the other imps who live in this neighborhood.” Then, in a kindly tone, he added significantly, “You know, Janet, I was never one for making distinctions in breed or birth. One finds true gentlemen and real ladies dressed in the meanest clothes and serving in the humblest capacities. Let Donald have plenty of rope and don’t coddle him too much.”

Young McKenzie’s introduction to public school life was rather a severe trial to a delicately nurtured boy, who had so far been, as jeering school-mates declared, “tied tae his mither’s apron strings!” His undoubted cleverness in the school-room commanded no admiration from his kind. On the other hand, he was reviled and held up to contempt as one who was false to school-boy traditions by actually studying his lessons—“tae keep in wi’ th’ teacher!” The majority of Scotch boys preferred to have their lessons driven into their hard heads by dint of much corporal punishment rather than lose valuable play hours by “dinnin’ ower their buiks.”

The fact that he lived in a villa in a select suburb, took piano, singing and dancing lessons, and wore nice clothes and a white linen collar—clean every morning—militated against him for a time. To his blue-jerseyed companions, white collars were the trade-marks of a “bloomin’ toff” and fair game for desecrating with ink and muddy paws. Mrs. McKenzie used to tremble with indignation at the sight of her son’s collar on his return from school, but after a month the soiled linen ceased to offend her eyes, as Donald simply removed his collar before entering school and put it on again prior to his entering his home.

He would have fared worse had it not been for Joak McGlashan. Joak was a “tough yin” and had considerable renown as a fistic gladiator. The arena for these encounters was a piece of waste land near the school and screened from the eyes of prowling “polismen” by a high bill-posting boarding. “Efter fower o’clock” was the invariable hour of combat, and many the time Donald arrived home late for tea through acting as second for the invincible Joak. These after-school fights were often sanguinary affairs and the Scotch stubborness and pugnacity were well exemplified in the savagery of the contestants. Scratching, kicking, and hitting a downed man were strictly taboo, but everything else went, and to see the appreciative looks on the faces, and hear the excited yells of the spectators during one of these “after four” meetings, one would be convinced that the Scottish youth was not far removed from his barbaric ancestor.

No boy in the school could avoid doing a round or two behind the bill-boards within a month of his entry into the Gregg street institution. If he hadn’t trampled the hallowed mud of the spot as a combatant it was either because he was too big and strong to be challenged, or because he was a coward. If the latter, his life would be made a misery to him and he would either have to leave the school or go into the arena with the weakest of his tormentors and either beat him or be beaten. A boy who had fought, whether licked or not, had proved himself and would be unmolested.

In due time Donald’s hour of trial came. A dock-lumper’s hulking son had usurped Donald’s hook in the cloak room and had thrown his coat on the floor. Donald saw the action and resented it by throwing the other’s coat off. No blows were exchanged at that time, as the argus-eyed janitor was around, but Luggy Wilson—the big fellow—doubled up his fist and tapped his nose significantly, saying, “Efter fower! Ah’ll do ye! Ye’ll fight me, McKenzie—dirrty toff!”

Luggy was big and strong but lacked “sand.” Donald was endowed with plenty of “grit,” and in the fight that followed behind the bill-boards after school, he came off the victor. A lucky punch on Luggy’s proboscis drew blood, and when the big fellow sighted his own gore he ran away home. Intoxicated with the exhilaration of victory, Donald insisted on Joak accompanying him to Maxwell Park as a reward for seconding him, and Joak, feeling just pride in his protégé, was glad to go and be in a position to give Captain McKenzie an eye-witness’s account of the fracas.

It was almost six o’clock when Donald, accompanied by Joak, burst into the McKenzie drawing-room. Both Captain and Mrs. McKenzie were at home and the Presbyterian minister and his wife—particular folk—were with them awaiting dinner. At the sight of her son—covered with mud, with swollen lips and a rapidly blackening eye, and accompanied by a shock-headed youngster in blue woollen jersey and hob-nailed boots—Mrs. McKenzie nearly fainted.

“Ah’ve had a fight, mamma!” ejaculated Donald, relapsing into the language of the street. “Ah licked a big fella ca’d Luggy Wulson. He was a big lump with nae guts and I bliddied his beak and gave him a keeker! Didn’t I, Joak?”

“Ye did!” grunted Joak laconically, taking in the luxurious surroundings of his “pal’s hoose.”

Mrs. McKenzie rang for the maid and gasped, “Mary! Take these boys out in the kitchen and clean them!”

The minister and his wife sat very prim and quiet. Mrs. McKenzie felt that her darling had fallen from his pedestal, while Captain McKenzie strode to the bay window and looked out with smiling eyes—secretly delighted—and proud to know that he had a son that was “all boy.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Two years at the Gregg Street Public School saw Donald in that exalted grade of learning known as the “Ex-sixth”—a sort of educational Valhalla which conferred a brevet rank upon one and caused the scholars of lesser degree to look up to its members with awe. The pupils of the Ex-sixth were supposed to have out-grown “the strap,” and their curriculum led them into the envied precincts of the school laboratory, where, at certain times, they could do all sorts of wonderful things with Bunsen burners, and test tubes, and hydrometers and such like. In this class a fellow could make gun-powder on the sly and color his knife or a white-metal watch and chain to look like gold by dipping it in copper sulphate.

Though Donald could boast of no prowess at the strenuous athletic games of football, running, jumping, etc., yet he developed remarkable ability as a swimmer. Swimming lessons were compulsory in the Gregg Street School and a fine swimming bath was attached to the institution, and the scholars had to take at least two lessons a week under the tutelage of a master of the natatory art. Young McKenzie took to the water like a duck, and his proficiency made him a favorite with the master and a contestant in inter-school matches, and during his year in the Ex-sixth he won the Glasgow Amateur Swimming Shield for schoolboys under 14 years of age.

His educational progress at the school had been marked by commendation and praise. He was an example to all, and on the “Prize Day” he invariably trotted home loaded with gift-books marked inside the cover, “Presented to Donald P. McKenzie for Excellence in Drawing,” or maybe it was for history, composition, geography, or some such subject in which he excelled. The constant repetition of McKenzie’s name on “Prize Day” caused less-favored youngsters to feel bored and to express their desire to give the clever one “a punch on th’ noase” for being so mentally efficient. This desideratum was expressed sotto voce and to intimates, as McKenzie’s fame as a fighter had been established since his encounter with Luggy Wilson, and who McKenzie couldn’t fight, his chum, Joak McGlashan could, so he was treated with considerable respect for a “toff that wuz clever at learnin’.”

Joak’s intellectual powers kept him to the Fifth Standard, and it was doubtful if he would go beyond that grade. He would never have retained his place in it were it not for Donald, who primed him and did his home work for him during the time the two were class-mates. Bos’n McGlashan used to regard with some wonder a prize book which his son had won for “General Excellence in Drawing” while with Donald in the Fifth Standard, and wonder still more when during Joak’s second year in the Fifth his drawing percentage was the lowest of any in the class. Joak explained this inexplicable loss of artistic ability by stating that he had sprained his thumb and couldn’t hold a pencil like during the prize-winning year, but to Donald he regretted the deception as one which gave him a lot of unnecessary work in trying to live up to it. The “sprained thumb” excuse came as a grateful relief.

Though separated by the gulf of learning, Donald and Joak fraternized as of yore, but Mrs. McKenzie absolutely refused to allow the McGlashan boy to come to the villa in Maxwell Park. Donald’s frequent lapses from the ethics of polite society in occasional interlardings of his conversation with “Glesca” vernacular, and in lengthy absences on Saturdays and holidays from the precincts of the villa, were laid to the baneful influence of Joak. Joak was blamed for Donald’s home-comings with dirt-bespattered clothing and grimy face. Joak was the leading spirit in those all-day pilgrimages “doon to the Docks,” and Joak was to be indicted for sending Donald home one day soaked to the skin after he had fallen off a raft which they had constructed to sail on the stagnant waters of a railway cut.

Saturday was a day of days with the boys. It was the day in which they toured the Port of Glasgow and conned its multifarious shipping; when they trudged from dock to dock, and basin to basin and appraised the model and rig of every craft that lay therein. “There’s a bonny boat fur ye noo, Donal’,” Joak would say as he eyed a liner with white-painted upper works and yarded masts. “She’s a big yin—an Injia boat, Ah’m thinkin’!” Donald would scan her with a sailorly eye. “She’s not an India boat, Joak. She’s in the North Atlantic trade. There’s no coolies aboard her. There’s always coolies on an India boat. Now, just look at that big sailing-ship beyond the bend. There’s a boat for ye! Let’s go down and maybe we can get aboard her.” Thus the pilgrims would go—dodging shunting engines and rumbling coal-trucks, cargo hoisting cranes and Dock Police—and the middle of the day would find them trudging up the odoriferous and noisy confines of M’Clure street, where at number thirty-seven, up three flights of stone stairs, Donald would find a welcome and a bite to eat from the big-hearted Mistress McGlashan. Of course, Mrs. McKenzie knew nothing of these social calls on her son’s part. If she did, Donald’s Saturday pilgrimaging would have been ruthlessly cut short.

It was a memorable day when in their prowls around the docks, Donald and Jock saw a wonderfully fine ship come up the river and moor at the Sutton Line quay. She was a new purchase of Sutton’s—a former London East India liner, and Suttons had bought her to put her in the New York trade as an off-set to a brand new ship which their rivals had just launched. Both boys admitted that the “new yin” was finer than the Cardonia, and both inwardly voiced the hope that their respective daddies would have the privilege of sailing on the latest addition to the Sutton fleet.

At school a week later, Donald sought his chum with portentous news. “My father’s going as Captain of the new ship, and she’s to be called the Sarmania. Isn’t that fine, Joak?”

Next morning young McGlashan had news. “Ma faither’s gaun as bos’n o’ th’ new yin, Donal’. He told me this morrn, an’ he’s gey prood. She’s th’ finest shup oot th’ Clyde, he says!”

When Captain McKenzie discussed the new ship with his wife, Donald showed a surprising knowledge of the vessel’s rig, design and tonnage.

“By George, young man,” exclaimed the father, “how do you happen to know so much about the ship?”

Mrs. McKenzie laughed. “What is there he doesn’t know?” she said. “Why he spends all his Saturdays and holidays wandering around the docks with that McGlashan imp and I can’t prevent him. I’m always in fear that he’ll be killed or drowned there some day.”

Captain McKenzie looked at his son. “What is the idea?” he enquired. “Why this craze for dock-wandering and ship-worshipping?”

“Why?” reiterated Donald slowly. “Why? Because I intend to go to sea myself some day!”

Captain McKenzie looked his son over critically and stroked his beard. Donald was twelve years old then—a tall, slim, comely lad. He had his mother’s dark hair and large dark brown eyes. The eyes were clear and sparkling and expressive of the boy’s emotions and served to lend distinction to a face which might otherwise be characterized as “plain.” His forehead was high; the nose was straight and the mouth large and firm, but there was a pallor to the skin which did not betoken rugged health, although he was wiry enough. His hands were small, with long artistic fingers, and as he looked at them, Captain McKenzie could not imagine those frail hands digging for finger-hold into the rough canvas of a wet topsail. Nor could he vision this carefully nurtured lad scrambling aloft on a dark, dirty night to the dizzy height of a swaying royal-yard, or tugging and hauling at wet ropes on a sluicing deck. A boy who had been trained in painting, music, singing, dancing and the culture of the drawing-room to herd with rough-spoken men who looked upon such accomplishments as effeminate and worthy only of curseful scorn; a boy that had never slept anywhere but in a warm, downy bed; who had never wanted for anything; who had never known cold and hunger; who had been petted and waited upon by a doting mother—Pah! The sea would kill him ere he had been a dog-watch in a ship’s company!

The father spoke quietly. “Donny, my lad,” he said, drawing his son to his knee, “you must give up that notion. The sea would kill you, laddie. You’re not strong enough for that life, and it’s a dog’s life at the best of times. Why, boy, I’d rather be a farmer with a snug place ashore than skipper of the Sarmania to-day.”

“But Nelson was a delicate boy, daddy,” protested Donald, “and he came along all right.”

“Yes, Donny, but Nelson was a man in a million. He was a solitary exception. I’ve seen poor little shavers go to sea and have to be taken ashore on a mattress absolutely crocked up for the remainder of their days. You’d be wasted at sea, laddie. You have ability and talents far beyond what I have, and if you develop them you should be wealthy and famous by the time you’re my age. No, no, boy! You must get that sea-fever out of your head. It’s no good, believe me!”

“Joak McGlashan’s going to sea, Dad, and we both planned to go together when we were fifteen or sixteen.”

The father smiled. “How are you going to work that? McGlashan’s folks could never afford to apprentice him. He’d have to go in the fo’c’sle as a boy.”

“Well, Dad, we planned we might go in a steamer together as deck-boys and serve our time. The sailing-ships might be too hard for me at first, but a steamer would be easier—”

The Captain burst into a guffaw. “You think so, eh? Let me tell you that you’ll do more real back-breaking and menial work aboard of a steamer than you’ll do on a sailing-ship. On a steamer! Huh! Shoveling ashes and cleaning out holes that a man couldn’t get into! A dirty deckboy at the beck and call of every ordinary seaman—and on a steamer! God forbid! They don’t make sailors on steamers, and even if you served your time in steam and got a master’s certificate, there isn’t a ship-owner would give you a ship, nor would you obtain the respect of officers and crew if you did get one. There’s no back-door for reaching the bridge in sea-faring. You have to serve your time in sail, and go thro’ the mill, otherwise you’d never get to be more than a common deck-hand no matter how clever you were. There is a time-keeper down in the wharf office with an Extra Master’s certificate, and he can’t get even a second mate’s berth. Why? Because he served his time in steam. He knows all about navigation, but he couldn’t put a square-rigger about, and that has damned him in the eyes of owners and sailormen. He might have the theory, but he hasn’t the practice, and that cooked his goose. Now, sonny, we’ll just drop all this notion of going to sea and you’ll study hard and be an architect and stay home and keep your mother company. One of us at sea is enough!”

Donald left the room abruptly and Mrs. McKenzie sat beside her husband. “I’m so glad you have talked to Donald, Alec,” she said. “He’s just crazy about going to sea, and I’ve heard nothing but ships, ships, and ships for months. He gloats over that sailing ship picture there and reads nothing but sea-stories, and I think that he and that McGlashan boy spend all their spare time around the docks. I hope you can drive the fancy out of his head.”

“All British boys have the fever at some time in their youth,” said the Captain with a laugh. “He’ll get over it. He can’t go to sea unless he runs away, and I’m sure he won’t do that!”

Upstairs in the privacy of his bedroom, Donald was prone on a sofa crying bitterly. His dreams and ideals had been ruthlessly smashed. He felt bitterly the lack of health and strength to do what other boys could do. How could he face Joak and tell him that he couldn’t accompany him in his sea-faring? It was hard to give up the idea after dreaming and weaving fancies around it so long. For an hour he lay alone in his misery, until the father and mother found him and petted and caressed him back to smiles again. “Don’t fret, Donny-boy,” said the father, who understood. He drew the boy to him and brought the wan, tear-stained face to his shoulder. “I tell you what I’ll do, sonny,” he said.

Donald looked up expectantly. “What, daddy?”

“Next May, if all goes well, I’ll take you and mamma on a voyage to New York and back. How’s that?”

“Hurray!” All disappointment was forgotten in the promise, and the boy alternately hugged his father and skipped around the room in joyful antics. “Won’t that be great! Hurray! Jingo! I must tell Joak. And in the Sarmania too! I can hardly wait until the winter’s over. Just think of it, mamma! To New York! Three thousand miles across the Atlantic!” His delight knew no bounds and seafaring ideals were, for the nonce, postponed.

On a brumal November day, the Sarmania was to sail on her first trip under the Sutton house-flag. Captain McKenzie had bidden his family an affectionate farewell early in the morning and had driven away in a cab with his white canvas sea bag and portmanteau on the “dicky.” Mother and son had watched the four-wheeler rattle down the road and had waved to the Captain peering for a last glance of home through the window. Partings are holy moments, fraught with memories and fears, and both watched the conveyance disappear from sight without speaking. “Mamma,” said Donald, when they entered the house again, “what do you say if we take a cab this afternoon and drive down to Renfrew and see the ship pass down the river. I’d like to see daddy’s ship going down to the sea.” The idea appealed to Mrs. McKenzie and she assented eagerly. “And mamma,” continued Donald, “I’d like to ask a favor and I hope you’ll grant it.”

“What is it, dear?”

“Let me go and get poor Joak McGlashan and take him with us. His papa is on the Sarmania too, and I’m sure it would be a great treat for him to see the ship.”

Mrs. McKenzie’s lips pursed and she was about to refuse gently, but something had softened her heart towards the undesirable Joak, and she gave permission. Donald grabbed his hat and coat and was off to thirty-seven M’Clure street.

Later in the day a cab plodded down to the grassy banks of the Clyde at Renfrew and the occupants got out. Joak had had a hair-cut and wore a collar—an adornment which chafed his neck and made him feel like a “bloomin’ toff.” In Mrs. McKenzie’s eyes, the youth, thus adorned, looked quite passable, and were it not for his “atrocious conversation,” she would have been impelled to invite Joak to tea on occasions. Joak’s dialect, however, barred him from the polite society of Maxwell Park, and Mrs. McKenzie felt that the restrictions could not be relaxed.

The party sat on a seat by a river-side path until Donald, who had been scanning the roily windings of the Clyde citywards, discerned three tall masts coming slowly around a bend. “Here she comes!” he cried.

Slowly and majestically the liner swung into view, with a paddle-wheeled tug straining at a stern hawser, and the boys scanned her over with appreciative delight. The Sarmania was, indeed, a queen among ships—a long, straight-stemmed, black-hulled dream of a vessel, flush-decked from stem to stern, with white painted rails, stanchions and life-boats in orderly array, and varnished teak deck-houses, whose brass-rimmed ports glittered in the cold November daylight. A lofty, black, red-banded funnel arose from a phalanx of ventilators amidships, and three tall pole masts, with square yards crossed on the fore, added to the appearance of a handsome ship.

The pilot-jack flew from a stem-head staff just in front of the uniformed Chief Officer standing up in the eyes of her; the graceful Stars and Stripes waved from the fore-truck, while the Sutton house flag and a red mail pennant decorated the other masts. Astern, from the jack-staff lazily waved “the old red duster”—the “blood and guts of Old England”—the red ensign of Britain’s Merchant Marine, and “The Flag” never floated from a nobler looking ship.

Mrs. McKenzie saw not the ship. Her eyes were riveted on the high bridge which stood, spider-like, on stout iron stanchions forward of the long funnel, and upon which strode her husband, uniformed, alert, and monarch absolute of the little world he ruled. Captain McKenzie paused in his thwartship pacings and whipped up a pair of binoculars to his eyes. The boys were swinging their caps and shouting; Mrs. McKenzie was waving a handkerchief. The Captain spied them, and taking off his uniform cap waved heartily. He turned for a moment and gave an order. A burst of steam whirled up from the liner’s funnel and the syren blared forth a farewell roar. “He’s blawin’ th’ whustle tae ye!” yelled Joak. “Ah see ma faither at the front o’ the shup. Haw, faither! Haw, faither!” And Joak yelled himself hoarse at the stocky figure which detached itself from a knot of seamen and waved a cap at the rail.

Slowly the fine ship glided past, decks thronged with passengers, and a column of black smoke ascended from the funnel as the firemen stoked for “a full head of steam.” The stern tug came abreast of the watchers, and the ship swung around a bend and slowly vanished.

Mrs. McKenzie called the boys, and with something of an ache in her heart, she drove home—remaining silent while the others chattered and described the fine points of the wonderful ship their fathers sailed in.

The Sarmania arrived in New York after a rapid passage, and Donald and Joak had discussed stealing down to the river-side when the ship was due back and watching her come in, but the December weather had set in with gales of wind and rain and the time of the ship’s arrival was problematical, so they gave up the idea and decided to meet the ship at the quay should the time of day be appropriate.

On a cold, wet winter’s morning, Donald trudged to school, intending at lunch hour to go down to the wharf office and ask if there was any word of the Sarmania, which was then due. Joak was not present that morning, but that was nothing unusual, as Joak was becoming tired of the Fifth Standard and played truant often. The morning dragged slowly. It was a dark, dismal Glasgow day—a day of sullen clouds and slashing rain—when the street lamps remained alight to do the work of the skulking sun, but Donald hummed softly at his work and looked forward to an evening with his father and a recital of the wonderful Sarmania’s maiden passage in the New York trade. He would be in that day, sure enough! He was a day late, but they always gave a day extra on winter passages, and Alec McKenzie seldom exceeded it.

Noon came and Donald was seated in a corner of the play-ground shed eating a lunch and kicking his legs to keep warm, when Joak—a grimy, wet and haggard Joak—came running up. Donald noticed that the tears were streaming from his eyes. “Who hit ye?” he gasped as he stood up and caught his staggering chum.

Joak ignored the question. “Oh Donal’, it’s awfu’, it’s awfu’! Ah dinna ken what to say!” And the tears and sobs burst forth anew.

Donald was alarmed. “What is the matter, Joak? Tell me, quick!”

Joak looked up from the bench upon which he had thrown himself prone and in a voice punctuated by sobs and moans, told the news.

“We’re orphans, Donal’. Th’ Sarmania’s jist cam’ in an’ your faither an’ my faither is no aboard her. They were lost oot on the Atlantic!”

The lunch dropped from Donald’s hand. For a moment he stood paralyzed, staring at his weeping chum. The dreadful sense of his loss benumbed his brain and he almost felt like laughing insanely. Then reason and realization came rushing back, and he fled from the school and ran, with fear urging him, to his mother and home.

CHAPTER FIVE

Donald rushed into the house to find visitors in the front parlor with his mother. He peered through the curtain and saw her seated on a lounge, deathly pale, and twisting a sodden handkerchief in her fingers. By her red-rimmed, swollen eyes, Donald knew she had been crying. The visitors were Captain McGillivray, the Sutton Line Marine Superintendent, and a burly man in uniform whom Donald recognized as Mr. McLeish, Chief Officer of the Sarmania. Both men rose to their feet as Donald slipped in and ran to his mother’s side. Clasped in her arms and crying silently, he listened to Mr. McLeish’s story—told with all technical embellishments through nervousness and an effort to keep from tears. Poor, honest, simple-hearted McLeish! It was a hard task they gave him!

“Ye see, Mistress McKenzie,” he proceeded huskily, “we left Sandy Hook on the morn o’ the sixth o’ December an’ ran intae a succession o’ heavy easterly gales. We made twenty west four days ago, when it sterted in tae blow worse’n ever frae the east’ard and an awful sea made up. Th’ Captain didny dare steam her in th’ face o’ sich a wind an’ sea, so he keppit her heid to it and turning over jist enough to give her steerage-way. Yer husband, madam, was a wonderful sailor and he handled that Sarmania beautifully, and mind ye, she’s a shup that needs carefu’ handlin’—bein’ a long, deep shup wi’ no much beam. As I was sayin’, we kep’ her bows-on to it waitin’ for a let-up, and at fower in th’ mornin’ I had jist cam’ doon aff the bridge tae go tae ma room. The Captun, yer husband, was up on the bridge wi’ th’ second mate, Mister Murphy, and a quarter-master in th’ wheel-hoose, when she shipped a nasty sea what carried away a ventilator on the fore-deck. The bos’n and three men were pluggin’ th’ place when the shup fell down in a reg’lar hole, they tell me. Ah was jist in ma room, at th’ time, and I could feel th’ shup slidin’ doon jist as if th’ sea had droppit from under her bottom. Ah rin tae the door o’ the alley-way and looks oot tae see a tremendous comber pilin’ up ahead. It was a terrifyin’ sea, that yin, madam, and I never saw anither like it in a’ ma sea-farin’! Then it must ha’ hit th’ shup, for she staggered somethin’ awfu’ and I couldny hear nought for a meenut or twa but the crashin’ and the roarin’ of it. Ah laid on ma back in the alley-way in water and I thocht th’ Sarmania was done for an’ goin’ to the bottom. Then I pickit masel’ up an’ went oot on deck and I found th’ whole bridge and wheel-house gone, the funnel, hauf o’ the ventilators and a’ th’ boats. She was stripped to bare decks and stanchions, madam, but worst of all, madam, yer husband was gone! Aye, him an’ the second mate, and the quartermaster at the wheel, and th’ bos’n and fower men. Eight gone, madam, and fower sae badly mashed up that I doot if they’ll leeve!” McLeish paused and blew his nose violently. “That’s a’ there is tae tell, madam,” he murmured. “Ah’m awfu’ sorry—awfu’——sorry!” He repeated the words in a daze like a man tired out.

Captain McGillivray arose to his feet. “Mrs. McKenzie,” he said quietly, “we’ll no keep ye from yer sorrow. Ye’ve had a terrible blow, but that’s what comes tae sailors’ wives at times. The Loard giveth and the Loard taketh away. Blessed is the name of the Loard. May He give ye comfort and strength in yer sair affliction!”

“Amen tae that!” murmured McLeish, and the two men took their leave.

Janet was left with nothing. Alec had never taken out insurance of any kind, and both husband and wife had lived up to every cent of income. There were many bills to be paid—caterer’s bills; dressmaker’s bills—useless debts, most of them, and the furniture of Kensington Villa had to be sold to pay them. Aye, Janet was suffering and paying the price of folly, and the double load of sorrow and recrimination was all that she could bear.

The huge tidal wave that swept McKenzie and his men to their graves in the chilly depths of the Atlantic did more than that. It swept the McKenzies from comparative affluence into stark poverty. It also cleared from Janet’s eyes the scales of false pride, and she was not too proud to go down and mourn with poor McGlashan’s widow ere she left Glasgow and her fair-weather friends.

The bos’n’s wife would get along. An older son was out earning a little, and Joak would have to do his bit also. Aye, she would manage. She had a few pounds laid by and wouldn’t starve. Poor Joak was “greeting” when Donald bade him “Good-bye.” “I’ll meet you again some day, Joak,” he said, “and I’ll write you, never fear!”

The management of Sutton’s had sent a cautiously-worded letter of regret, and took the liberty of “enclosing our check for fifty pounds, which no doubt would be useful.” They presumed, with the good salary that Captain McKenzie had enjoyed, that Mrs. McKenzie would have prepared for possible contingencies, and that she would be comfortable.

The fifty pounds represented Janet’s sole capital after all debts had been paid, and with this in her purse and a few boxes and trunks of personal clothing, she and Donald vanished from the ken of the aristocratic denizens of Maxwell Park. The tired-looking, dull-eyed woman in deep mourning who left the suburb that cold January morning, had but little resemblance to the haughty and conceited Jeanette McKenzie of a month before. Janet had commenced to learn a new lesson—a lesson which is oft intoned in cold Scotch kirks, “Beware of sinful pride! The pride of thine heart has deceived thee and though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord!” Aye, better the sight of eyes that see humbly than the blindness of vanity and desire!

Mother and son landed in a sea-port town not fifty miles from Glasgow and Janet rented a small furnished house in a modest street. The neighbors wondered who the “stylish lookin’” newcomers were, yet they evinced no great surprise when a printed placard was hung up in the front window with the legend, “Furnished Lodgings.” Buchan Road gossip sized the matter up in a few words. “Weedah-wumman left sudden-like an’ naethin’ pit by!” Such incidents were common in that locality.

And thus they lived for a space. The mother relapsed to the honest toil of her former days and just “managed” and no more to make ends meet, and Donald earned a few shillings per week as boy in the office of a local ship-yard. Both worked hard and were happy, and life went along uneventfully for two years.

Then came Mrs. McKenzie’s decision. Donald was not getting ahead in the shipyard office. The boy was restless and found it hard to apply himself to ledgers and journals. He had no liking for a clerical life, and he was reaching the age where he did not know what he wanted to do. Mrs. McKenzie had her secret ambition to see her son an architect, but in her present circumstances she couldn’t afford it. There was one source of possible assistance she had never appealed to. She would try it right away.

On a drizzling spring day, the mother, still comely and dressed in black, accompanied by Donald—a bit taller, perhaps, but unchanged in features, and clad in carefully brushed clothes and with a clean white collar on and shining black boots—stopped in front of an office building in Bothwell Street, Glasgow. A brass plate bore the legend they sought—“D. McKenzie & Co., Ship Owners & Ship Brokers.”

Entering a rather gloomy office they waited at a counter until a lanky clerk of undeterminable age unlimbered himself from a high stool and brusquely asked, “What can we do for ye?”

“I want to see Mr. McKenzie, if he is in.”

“He’s in,” grunted the clerk. “Have ye a kerd? And what’s yer business with him?”

“Purely private and personal,” replied Janet, producing a visiting card—relic of better days.

The clerk scanned the name and became obsequious. “Wait a minute, ma’am,” he said, and he took the card into a private room. He seemed to be gone a long time—long enough for Donald to scan his uncle’s office and its contents. There were several pictures of ships on the wall, a few maps, and insurance calendars. Numerous old-fashioned desks and cupboards littered the place, while an old-maidish female clerk sat at a window writing in a large book, and a bent-backed, grey-haired man was copying letters in a press. Everything in the establishment, material and human, seemed to be old and dried-up and mean looking. The windows were grimy, and even the driving spring rain failed to make them clearer. Donald figured that the grime was on the inside.

The boy’s attention was centered on a picture of a large iron barque on the wall in front of him. It was a big ship—heavily sparred—and it was riding along with all sail set over a sea like corrugated iron. Painted on the frame was the legend, “Barque Dunsany, D. McKenzie & Co., Glasgow, Owners.” Donald was studying the painting, when the lanky clerk issued from the sound-proof inner chamber. Addressing Mrs. McKenzie, he said, almost insolently, “Mr. McKenzie cannot see you!”

Janet colored. “Why?” she asked calmly.

“He gave no reasons, ma’am,” said the clerk. “Simply said he didny want to see you on any matter or any excuse.”

The mother went white. Her mission had failed and she was too proud to plead. “Come, Donald,” she said. “We’ll go!”

They had hardly reached the stairs before the clerk caught up to them. “Mr. McKenzie has changed his mind,” he exclaimed. “He will see you if ye’ll come back with me.”

A minute later they were ushered into the private office and stood facing the man—Alec’s brother—who in bitterness and unreasonable pride had kept himself aloof from them for eighteen years.

He was seated before a large table littered with papers and books—a hard-visaged, stiff-mouthed man, pallid-faced and stern-looking. His thin hair straggled over his forehead, unkempt, and he sat back in his chair with his head hunched into his collar, his clean-shaven chin sunk into his chest, and regarded the McKenzies through steel-rimmed spectacles with searching, unfriendly eyes.

There were two chairs in the office and he indicated one with his hand. “Sit doon, madam!” he said in a harsh voice. “The boy can stand!” And he glanced sternly at his brother’s son.

Donald stood up with his hat in his hand and stared at his uncle with feelings of resentment and dislike bubbling within him. It was difficult for him to believe that this hard-faced ship-broker and his laughing, rollicking, blue-eyed daddy were of the same blood and born of the same mother.

McKenzie spoke and his voice burred with Scottish accent and grated like a saw on iron. “What d’ye want me to do for ye, madam? Ye’ve come to me wanting something, or I’ve missed my guess!”

Donald could notice a look as of pain cross his mother’s face as she nervously twisted her black-gloved fingers. She looked old that morning. “I’ve come to see if you can do anything to help Donald—my boy here,” she said, a trifle nervously.

“In what way?” rasped the ship-broker.

“Well, sir,” continued Mrs. McKenzie, “he has a natural talent for drawing, and it was Alec’s wish that Donald become an architect, and it was our intention to put him through College, but, as you know, my husband went”—here she faltered—“and—and—I—I was unable to give him the schooling necessary. I—I thought, that, maybe for Alec’s sake, you would help Donald in some way and put him through school for an architectural training.”

David McKenzie listened unemotionally. “Humph!” he grunted, then with his searching eyes on Janet, he enquired in the manner of a prosecutor:

“Did you save no money from my brother’s salary? I understand he was gettin’ big money from Sutton’s—four hundred pounds a year as master—for a considerable time before he was drowned.”

Mrs. McKenzie winced. “I saved nothing,” she murmured.

“So!” The prosecutor’s voice grated on. “Ye were penniless when Alec went? Aye! Ye spent what he earned like watter. Ye lived in a villa and in a style fitted for people with an income twice what Alec was gettin’. I ken all aboot it, for I made enquiries. And noo ye’re keepin’ a lodgin’-hoose and comin’ tae me tae help pit yer son through tae become an architect.” He paused and leaned further back in his chair. “Why should I be asked to do this?”

“Why?” Mrs. McKenzie repeated the word dazedly. “Why? Well, I thought as you were Alec’s brother you’d be glad to do something for his son!”

“So!” Donald stood inwardly furious at the manner in which this dead-souled man was tongue-lashing his mother. “So! The lesson ye have learned—or ought to have learned—hasny driven the high-falutin’ notions oot yer head! Ye think because the lad can draw a bit that he should be an architect. It’s a wonder tae me ye didny want him tae be an artist and ask me tae send him tae Paris!” McKenzie’s eyebrows elevated sarcastically and he continued. “Madam! Your coming to me for such a thing is jist as big a piece o’ presumption as if the mother of yin of those pavement-artists came tae me on the same mission! Neither you nor yer son have any more claim upon my charity than they would have! If he could write poetry, ye’d want me to help him be a poet, I s’pose? Now, look here, madam!” He tapped the table with a pencil. “You’re in no position to have such notions! It was your high-and-mighty ideas that placed ye in the way ye are to-day! If your boy is clever at drawing, pit him tae work with a hoose painter or a sign painter. Let him get tae work. He’s auld enough!” Then almost fiercely to Donald. “How old are ye, boy?”

“Fifteen last October, sir!” answered the boy calmly.

“Old enough tae go to sea!” growled David McKenzie. “Would ye go to sea, boy, after what happened to yer father?”

“I would,” answered Donald wonderingly, “if I knew that mother was provided for.”

Mrs. McKenzie interposed. “I wouldn’t allow him to go to sea!”

The other took no notice, but reached for a pad of paper. “Give me yer address,” he grated. “I’ll see what I can do for ye, but, I’ll say this, that I’ll not be makin’ an architect oot of that boy there. You may go!”

He neither rose from his seat or made any offer to shake hands. Mrs. McKenzie hesitated for a moment at the door of the room, but David was absorbed in some letters and did not look up. “Thank you! Good day!” she said dully, and Donald echoed, “Good day, sir!” He took no notice, but when they left, he jumped up and locked his office door and sat for a long time staring out of the grimy window—oblivious to respectful taps on the closed panels. From a scrutiny of the grey sky, he turned and stared fixedly at a small photograph on his desk—a picture of a young boy—and the stern look faded from his face. It was his own son. For a minute he gazed on the picture with eyes in which a strange light of almost idolatrous affection glowed, then he turned and picked up Mrs. McKenzie’s card and the bitter, sneering expression returned as he murmured, “Aye! I’ll look after her brat!”

The McKenzies were out on the street again when Donald clasped his mother’s hand. “The old beast!” he said. “How I hate him!” The mother made no answer. She had only been with David for five or ten minutes, but in that time he had wounded her to the soul and she felt that all that he said was true.

They went home and tried to forget the memory of that hateful interview, but a week later came a letter from David McKenzie.

“Dear Madam:”—it ran—“I have considered your case carefully. I will give your boy the benefit of a free apprenticeship on a new vessel which will be ready for sea in a month or two. For yourself, I am enclosing a letter to the manager of the Ross Bay Hydropathic, Ross Bay, Ayrshire, and if you will present this to him on May 1st, he will give you a position there as assistant matron. Yours truly, David McKenzie.” There was a postscript which ran:—“I will advise you when your boy should report here at my office. I will provide him with the outfit necessary. D. McK.”

Janet read the curt offer and for a moment she stared into space. “Donald to go to sea! The sea that had torn her husband—his father—ruthlessly from her! And poor Joak’s father too! The sea that yearly made widows of so many Glasgow wives....” She remembered her dead husband’s words, “The sea would kill you, laddie ... and it’s a dog’s life at the best of times!” She threw the letter down on the table. No! she wouldn’t accept David’s offer. It was the cruelest blow he had yet dealt her. She would manage somehow, but she’d keep Donald by her.

“What does he say, mamma?” Donald picked up the letter and read it. The mother stared at him as he read and she noticed the look in his eyes with an unknown fear gripping her heart. Ere he had laid the missive down she knew what was in his mind.

“Mother, dear,” he said, slipping his arm around her neck, “I want to go!”

For a moment she remained silent and her mind ran back to a day two years ago. McLeish, mate of the Sarmania was talking. “It was a terrifyin’ sea, that yin, madam ... and when I pickit masel’ up ... I found tha whole bridge and wheelhouse gone ... and worst of all, madam, yer husband was gone! Aye, him an’ th’ second mate, an’ th’ quarter-master, the bos’n an’ fower men ... an’ fower sae badly mashed up that I doot if they’ll leeve! And that’s all there is tae tell, madam!” She shuddered at the horrible memory of it. The frightful wall of grey-green sea rising up, curling and roaring. The terrible crash as it engulfed the ship, and the bare wet decks, twisted iron work and debris which remained. The others—the human victims—were carried away in the maw of the monster—whipped from life into death with a suddenness which was staggering. “No! no! no!” she cried, clasping her son to her in a frenzy of fear. “You shan’t go! He shan’t send you!” But in spite of her objections, she knew that the irresistible lure of the sea would take her son from her and that the ties of love and home were powerless against the magic of its adventure and romance.

CHAPTER SIX

In a month’s time, Donald received a curt note from his uncle to come to Glasgow and to be at the office at “nine sharp.” He entered the gloomy chambers at ten minutes to the appointed hour and stood waiting outside the counter. At nine, David McKenzie entered the office and Donald greeted him with a respectful “Good morning, sir!” The uncle turned and glared at him through his glasses. “Oh, ye’re here, are ye?” he rasped. “Jist wait in the office here until I want ye!” Then he entered his own private room and left his nephew cooling his heels until nigh twelve o’clock. By that time Donald had scrutinized every article in the dingy office and had surmised the characters of the old maidish clerk at the window, the grey-headed bookkeeper, and the lanky youth, perched like the gods on Olympus, on the long stool. People occasionally came in with papers—bills of lading and so on—and once or twice, shawled women entered and asked if there was any word of the Dunlevin. The Dunlevin was evidently one of his uncle’s ships, thought Donald, and he wondered what would be the name of the ship he would go to sea in.

At noon, a stocky man dressed in rough woollen serge entered. He appeared about fifty-five years of age and wore a square-topped bowler hat and heavy black boots, and had a face as red and as round as a harvest moon. He turned and glanced at Donald as he laid an umbrella on the counter, and the lad saw that he was clean-shaven save for a fringe of whisker under the chin. He had a bulbous red nose and small blue eyes—hard, mean-looking eyes, Donald thought—and his red face was pitted with the marks of small-pox. In a quiet tone—Donald expected a husky roar—he asked the lanky clerk “if Mister McKenzie could see him noo?”

“He’s expectin’ you, Captun,” said the clerk, and he vanished into the private room.

A few moments later, the Captain entered the sacred precincts, and after a while David McKenzie appeared at the door and cried, “Come in here, boy!”

Donald entered the private office and found the red-faced man seated in a chair with his umbrella between his knees and a pair of ham-like fists clasping the handle of it.

“This is the lad I was speaking about, Captain,” said the ship-owner in his grating voice. Turning to Donald, he said, “Boy, this is Captain Muirhead, master of oor new ship, the Kelvinhaugh. As you will be going to sea in that ship wi’ Captain Muirhead, it’s no too early for ye to get acquainted.” Donald stepped forward and shook hands with the Captain, who smiled and murmured something about, “Gled tae have ye come with me, mister. Hope we’ll get along.” Donald thought he would like Captain Muirhead, but he mistrusted those piggish blue eyes of his.

“Now,” said his uncle, seating himself at the table, “we’ll fix up this indenture business an’ th’ Captain will take ye along to an outfitter’s shop and get ye a kit. Ye’ll get doon aboard the ship next Monday mornin’ at five o’clock—no six o’clock or sevin o’clock—but five sharp, and if ye pay attention to your work and do your duty, ye’ll have a chance tae become master of a ship yersel’ some day. Now, ye can sign yer name to these indentures.”

The business of signing the apprentice seaman’s indentures was soon completed and Donald voluntarily bound himself apprentice unto David McKenzie & Co., and signed his name to “faithfully serve his said master and obey his and their lawful commands ... and said apprentice will not, during the service of four years, embezzle or waste the goods of his master; nor absent himself without leave; nor frequent taverns or alehouses; nor play unlawful games, etc., etc. Whereof the said master hereby covenants with the said apprentice to teach the said apprentice the business of a seaman and provide the said apprentice with sufficient meat, drink, lodging, washing, medicine and medical or surgical assistance.” Donald saw these paragraphs and noted them vaguely as he inscribed his name to the document prescribed for the purpose by the British Board of Trade. Then in company with Captain Muirhead, he went to an outfitters on Jamaica street and procured a sea kit.

It was a poor lot of truck that his Uncle David was purchasing for him, and the Captain evidently had instructions to keep the cost down to a certain figure. A mattress—a common jute bag stuffed with straw—and a blanket of thin shoddy came first. Then Donald was measured for a cheap blue serge uniform. A peaked uniform cap, with the “Dun Line” house-flag on the badge; a suit of two-piece oilskins, a pair of leather sea-boots, a sou’wester, two suits of dungarees, two woollen jerseys, some underwear and socks, towels, soap, matches, knife, fork, spoon, an enamel mug and a deep plate practically completed the outfit which was hove into a cheap pine chest with rope handles. The Jew salesman threw in a belt and a sheath-knife “as a present,” and the Captain said to Donald, “Ye’ve got a rig there fit to go ’round the Horn, mister, and a sight better’n I had when I first went to sea!”

The cheap junk which constituted an outfit and which was packed in Donald’s chest, appeared quite all right to him and he was delighted with every article. He longed for the day when he could don the brass-buttoned blue suit and wear the badged cap of an apprentice seaman. He pictured himself swaggering ashore in foreign ports, with the cap set back on his head—in the manner approved of by ’prentices—and with the chin strap over the crown. “Ye’ll get yer suit in two days, sir!” said the tailor. “Will you call, or will I send your kit?” As Donald wasn’t sure if he would be in the city, he said that he would call.

Before taking a train for home, he asked some questions of the uncommunicative Captain Muirhead, and found out that the Kelvinhaugh was a brand-new four-mast barque of about 2,500 tons, and that she was loading railroad iron for Vancouver—a long round-the-Horn voyage. They would probably get a homeward cargo of grain from the West Coast, and then again they might charter to load lumber at Vancouver for Australia or South Africa—the Captain couldn’t say. Vancouver! Australia! South Africa! thought Donald. What names to conjure with! How he would roll them off his tongue—easily and nonchalantly, as a sailor would. “Aye, I’m sailing to-morrow. ’Round the Horn to Vancouver, and then across the Pacific to Australia maybe. Be back in a year or eighteen months. So long!” As the train sped home, he sat in a corner of the third-class compartment and thought of the wonder and romance of it all. Running down the “Trades”; crossing the “Line” and doubling the stormy, storied Horn! That was the life for a red-blooded boy! And some of those future days he pictured himself pacing a liner’s bridge—monarch of all he surveyed—and saying, as he had heard his father say: “My ship did this!” or “My ship carried them!” Oh, it was fine castle building, and he actually blessed his uncle for the chance he had given him and forgave his bitter words and brutal mannerisms.

Mrs. McKenzie did not share his enthusiasm. His jubilation at getting away to sea; his description of the ship, the voyage, his uniform and prospects for the future were like salt on an open wound, and she would listen mechanically to his chatter, but her mind was far away and her heart was full of bitterness. She would be alone—frightfully alone—and she would be afraid. Donald, her baby boy, out at sea in that ship with rough men and living a rough life! She had heard her husband talk of his sailing-ship days and she remembered his worst experiences.

Could Donald stand such a life? She was afraid, and she felt that her boy was going on a journey the outcome of which she was unable to forecast.

Sailing day came on winged feet and mother and son journeyed to Glasgow on the Sunday morning. They strolled through the Kelvingrove Park on the bright Sabbath afternoon, just as they used to stroll when Captain McKenzie was home and they were all together, and the recollection of those happy days made the mother feel that life was dealing harshly with her. But, whatever her feelings were, she hid them for Donald’s sake and under a smiling mask concealed the anguish which was gnawing at her heart. What a brave little chap he looked in his badged cap and brass-buttoned uniform! There was a flush on his cheek and a glow in his eyes that she had never seen before. Aye! the magic of the great waters was calling to one bewitched and whose sole acquaintance with the sea was in the sight of the ships, the talk of sailormen, and through the Viking strain in the British blood!

They had tea together and went to church in the evening. Strangely enough the preacher chose as his text, “The Sea is His!” and his discourse went direct to the mother’s heart. In all that great church there was only one to whom his slowly intoned words had a significant meaning. “The Sea is His! He made it!” the preacher said—his utterance rich with homely Doric. “Never the man born of woman throughout the ages of earth could arrest its tides or command its resistless waves. Ships traverse its wastes, but make their voyagings only through His sufferance—a momentary loosing of His hurricanes and they could be blotted out as utterly as though they never existed. It is irresistible in its fearful power, and in a mere minute of time the most marvellously wonderful, and the mightiest creations of our human handiwork can be swept into utter oblivion, with never a trace of where stone stood upon stone, or iron riveted to iron. It can be neither pathed or bridged, harnessed or commanded, and all the skill and ingenuity of man has failed, and will ever fail, to share with God the proud boast that the sea is subject to any bidding but His. Only He who walked on Galilee could order, ‘Peace! be still!’ and have His mandate obeyed. The sea is His, my brethren, and those who traverse verse its unmarked paths would do well to sail with God in their hearts, for it is only God who can save and protect them in their journeyings o’er its vast and restless expanse!”

The congregation knew the truth of the preacher’s words. They were ship-builders, many of them, and they wrought in the yards that made the old Clyde-side city famous. They knew what the sea called for in the structures which they framed and plated and rigged; they knew what the sea could do to iron and steel stanchion, frame, beam and plate. Many a twisted wreck had come to their hands to be straightened, untwisted, flattened out and replaced. “Goad, aye! we ken its handiwork!” they muttered. In their cold Scotch perception, this was the manner in which they comprehended the power of Him who calmed Galilee.

Mother and son sat up talking late into the night. It was the mother’s hours and she used them as a mother would with a son who was leaving her for a space of months, and maybe, years. She told of old remedies for this ail and that ill. She gave him motherly cautions regarding wet feet, damp bedding and draughts. She gave him a little ditty-bag well furnished with needles, cottons, threads, darning wool, buttons and such like, and her last and greatest gift was a small Bible. They were holy hours, and they sat and talked until her regard for his sleep caused her to send him reluctantly to bed. She came to him then and tucked him in and kissed him as she always did, and when she went away, her tears wetted his cheek. He tried, as boys do, to carry it off “big,” but when she left him he cried, too, as many a brave man has cried in similar partings since the world was young.

He awoke at four next morning to find his mother beside his bed. She had never closed her eyes, but now she was smiling. She wasn’t going to send him to sea with tears and heart-burnings to pain his recollections of parting. He dressed hurriedly, gulped the tea and toast she had procured for him, and sat awaiting the cab which was to take him down to his ship. His sea-chest was packed and ready, and the mother had gone through it and replaced to the best of her ability some of the shoddy gear which she knew would never stand sea-faring.

They heard the rattle of the wheels and hoofs on the stony street. The mother clasped her son in a close embrace. “Don’t you worry about me, dear,” she said. “I shall go to the Hydropathic and I will be quite comfortable there. Be a good boy and take care of yourself. God bless you and keep you, dear, and may your dear father watch over you!”

The cab-man came up into the room and the wet streamed off his clothes. “Dirrty mornin’, ma’am,” he said huskily. “Ah’ll jist hond this box doon.” And he shouldered the sea-chest and led the way.

The boy entered the cab and drove away, and Mrs. McKenzie stood in the rain at the door and watched it vanish just as she had watched, many times, the departures of her husband. “He’s gone! he’s gone!” she murmured dully, and only turned to enter the house when the woman who kept it led her away with a “Cheer up, mum! He’ll be back, never fear! Come and hae a cup o’ tea. It’s guid med’cine fur a sair heart!”

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Kelvinhaugh was lying in the Queen’s Dock and the cab rattled down the silent streets which glistened wet in the glow of the gas-lamps. It was a typical Glasgow morning—dark, cheerless and with a cold drizzle descending from the brooding skies. They passed men—hands in pockets and shoulders hunched—hurrying through the rain to their “wurrk.” Dock policemen loafed under the eaves of the sheds, standing like statues with their oilskin capes reflecting the vagrant flickering of near-by gas jets. It was a ghastly morning to be going to sea, and Donald’s spirits were at a very low ebb. There was very little romance in this sort of thing.

The clatter of hoofs stopped and the cabman hailed a passer-by. “Hey, you! Whaur’s th’ Kelvinhaugh lyin’?”

“Twa berths doon!” came the answer. The hoofs and wheels clattered again and ceased a minute later. The Jehu came down from his “dickey.” “Yer shup’s lyin’ here, mister,” he said. “Ah’ll kerry yer box an’ gear tae th’ gang-way.”

Donald followed him through a cargo shed, dark and dismal in its emptiness. Some sparrows were quarrelling up in the rafters and two pigeons picked vagrant ears of corn from the bare stone floors. Over at an open quayside door, a knot of people were standing, and through the opening one got a glance of the gleaming wet mast of a ship and vertical parallels of new manilla cordage. To this door the cabman shouldered Donald’s sea-chest and bed gear and tumbled it down at the shore end of a narrow gang-way. “Ah’ll hae tae leave ye here, mister,” he said huskily. “Ah canny trust ma hoarse tae staund verra long.... Aye! that’ll be two shullin’ for you, sir! Thankye, mister, and a pleasant voyage tae ye!”

The people around the gang-way turned and stared at the boy. There were several shawled women among them, evidently seeing their men off, and some of the men appeared to be very drunk. As Donald pushed through them to get to the gang-way, a man laughed and said, “Make way fur th’ binnacle-boy!” Some of the women laughed also in a manner which testified to the brand of “tea” they had been imbibing that morning.

The gang-way was laid on the ship’s rail and opposite the half-deck, in the door of which a young fellow was standing looking at the dock. Donald addressed him. “Will you give me a hand to get my chest and bedding aboard?” The other growled an “Alright!” and came ashore. He was a youth of about twenty—a big fellow with pleasant features—but he had a glum look in his eyes, and there was a downward droop to his mouth. He followed Donald and roughly elbowed a passage through the group at the gang-way end. One of the shawled women blocked his way with a challenging look on her coarse face, but the youth shouldered her aside ruthlessly, saying, “Out of my way, you——!” Donald was shocked at such treatment of a woman, but he was shocked still more by the oath-besprinkled retort which came from the aggrieved one’s lips.

Both lugged the chest up the gang-way, while the lady of the shawl spoke her mind. “Ye lousy pair o’ brass-bound poop ornaments!” she shrieked. “Ah’d like tae gie ye a scud on yer bloody jaws, ye blankety blank——” One of the drunks beside her whipped his wet cap off his cropped skull and gave the virago a resounding slap across the mouth with it. “Haud yer tongue, ye gabby——!” he growled, but he got no further. With a wild shriek, she turned on him. Off went the shawl, and a fiend of a woman, with tousled hair flying and practically naked above the waist, dug her nails into cropped-head’s ugly face and scraped him from hair to chin. The two of them set-to in earnest—swearing, clawing, punching and kicking like a pair of wild-cats—and the others looked on without attempting to interfere.

Heavy footsteps came padding up the shed. “Chuck it! Here’s the polis!” cried someone, and a stalwart Highland policeman grasped the combatants and swung them apart. “Lemme get at him!” howled the woman—a shocking sight in her deshabille, but the policeman had her by the arm and held her off in a mighty grip. “Is that your shup?” he asked the man. “Aye, Ah’m sailin’ in her!” growled the fellow, wiping the mud and blood off his ugly face. The officer of the law released the woman and marched the man up the gang-plank. At the rail of the ship he roared, “Hey! tak’ this fella aboard an’ lock him up!” And he swung him down on the barque’s main-deck with no gentle hand. Someone took the man and stowed him away.

Donald had seen his chest stowed inside the half-deck and had watched the rumpus on the dock. “Isn’t that awful?” he said, utterly shocked. The glum-looking youth grunted. “That’s nothing! You’ll see worse’n that some day!” Then the glum look faded somewhat and he regarded Donald curiously. “You’re a new chap?” he enquired. “First voyage, eh?”

Donald nodded. “What’s your name?” enquired the other.

“Donald McKenzie.”

“Mine’s Jack Thompson.” Both boys shook hands. Donald felt that he would like Thompson. They sat down at a small mess-table and talked. Thompson had been at sea three and a half years. He had six months of his time to serve and hoped to go up for his second mate’s ticket by the time the Kelvinhaugh made a home port—“if she ever makes a home port,” he added gloomily.

“Why?” asked Donald. He had glanced around the ship and she seemed to be a splendid vessel. Everything was brand-new and shining. “She seems a fine ship!”

“Fine hell!” growled the other disgustedly. “She’s nothing but a big steel tank and a cheap one at that! A great big lumbering, clumsy, four-posted box, built by the mile and cut off by the yard, that’ll give us merry blazes when we get outside. I can see what’s before us. She’ll be dirty, wet, and a bloody work-house from ‘way-back. That’s what she’ll be. If I had of seen her before yesterday, I’d have skipped—’pon my soul I would!”

Donald was not unacquainted with the idiosyncrasies of sailors, so he put Thompson’s pessimism down to a sailing-day grouch. They talked a while and Donald learned that there would be two other apprentices who would join the ship at Greenock—a port at the mouth of the Clyde. These lads, together with Thompson and Captain Muirhead, had been together on the barque Dunottar, but this ship had been run into and sunk in the Irish Channel a few months back. The “Dun Line” people had bought the Kelvinhaugh on the stocks to take the lost vessel’s place in a charter for carrying railroad iron out to the Pacific Coast for one of the Canadian railways. There had been four apprentices on the Dunottar, but one of them was drowned when the ship went down. “A first voyager, too,” said Thompson, “but the ruddy young fool went back to save some of his gear and got caught!”

“What kind of a man is Captain Muirhead?” enquired Donald.

“From what I’ve seen of him,” replied the other bluntly, “I don’t like him much. He was only on the Dunottar the voyage she went to the bottom, and as she slid for Davy’s Locker four days after leaving port we didn’t get time to get acquainted. He’s a mean josser and a bad-tempered one too. But what can you expect in one of these ships? McKenzie only pays his skippers twelve pounds a month. Good men wouldn’t go to sea in them for that.” Staring curiously at Donald, he asked, “Your name is McKenzie. Are you any relation to the owner of these hookers?”

“Yes,” replied the other. “He’s my uncle.”

Thompson whistled and said aggressively, “Well, you can tell your uncle next time you write to him that he’s a lousy, miserable swine and that his ships are the worst-fed, worst-rigged, rottenest, under-manned hookers afloat! Wouldn’t I jolly well like to have him aboard one rounding Cape Stiff! He’d get a belly-full of it—the blasted two-ends-and-the-bight of a skin-tight Glasgow miser!”

Donald was not surprised at this freely-expressed opinion of his uncle, but he quickly disabused Thompson’s mind of any intention of writing him. “My uncle isn’t in love with me, and probably doesn’t care two pins about me!” he said shortly.

Thompson laughed. “Oh, well,” he said, “we’re in for it now, and we’ve got to stick it out. Now, sonny, I’m going to give you some tips. First of all, I’m top-dog in this half-deck. I’m the senior apprentice and what I say goes—in here. Remember that!” Donald nodded. “Now,” continued the other, “you seem a nice little chap, so I’ll take you in hand. You take this upper bunk here and chuck your bed-sack and blanket into it. These upper bunks are the best when the water is sloshing in here a foot-and-half deep. Don’t you give that bunk up on any pretence. The others will have to take the lowers, whether they like it or not. Serve ’em right for being ‘last-minute-men’ and not joining the ship here.” Donald hove his bedgear into the bunk. Thompson glanced at the stuff and felt the blanket. “Where did you get that junk? Your uncle fitted you out, ye say? God help ye! It has his trademark—a Parish Rig, a donkey’s breakfast and a bull-wool and oakum blanket! I can see he don’t love ye! Now, son, get those brass-bound rags off and get into your working clothes. You’ll have to turn-to in a minute or so. We’re waiting for the tugs and the Old Man.”

While Donald was changing his clothes the door opened and a tall man about thirty years of age and clad in an oilskin coat and with a badged cap on his head peered inside. He had a clean-cut face, an aquiline nose, piercing grey eyes, a flowing reddish mustache, and he was smoking a cigarette.

“Get ready, naow!” he said in a nasal drawl which bespoke his nationality as American. “I’ll want ye in a minute or so.”

Thompson looked up from the chest he was unpacking. “Yes, sir, we’ll be ready, sir. And, Mr. Nickerson, sir, it’s a dirty morning. Would you care for a nip, sir!”

The other swung his sea-booted feet over the washboard, entered, and closed the door. “Produce th’ med’cine young feller,” he drawled. “The Old Man will be singin’ out in a minute. Who the devil is this nipper?” He indicated Donald with a jerk of his head.

“The new apprentice, sir,” answered Thompson. “Just joined. First voyager, sir.”

The tall man fixed Donald with his gimlet eyes. “What’s yer name, nation, an’ future prospects? Donald McKenzie, eh? Scotch, I cal’late, an’ goin’ to be a sailor I reckon. Waal, let me tell ye, ye’re a bloody fool an’ ye’ll know it before ye’ve bin a dog-watch at sea. I’m the mate of this bally-hoo of blazes, and my name’s Judson Nickerson and I hail from Nova Scotia. When you address me you say ‘Mister’ and ‘sir,’ and when I address you, you jump, see?” He thrust forth a mighty fist and crushed Donald’s hand in a vice-like clasp. “You be a good boy, obey orders an’ look spry, and we’ll get along fine. Skulk, sulk or hang back, and I’ll make you wish you’d never been born!”

Thompson brought forth a bottle of whisky from his chest and handed it to the mate, who tilted it to his lips and swallowed a noggin which caused Donald to stare in amaze. Mr. Nickerson noticed the boy’s wide-opened eyes, and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, laughed. “Never seen a man drink, sonny?” he asked. “Cal’late afore ye’ve made a voyage or two—ef ye live it out—ye’ll drink a bottle at a sitting.” He swung outside again with a parting word to get ready.

Thompson took a swig at the bottle and put it back in the chest, saying, “I’m not going to give you a slug, nipper. You’ll learn quick enough without me starting you off! Curse it! The only way to go to sea is half-drunk anyway.”

There were numerous shouts out on deck and sea-booted feet clattered outside the half-deck door. The crew were being mustered. Mr. Nickerson could be heard singing out, “Look slippy, naow, you damned Paddy Wester! Get that gear away out o’ that!” and “Bos’n! Bos’n! Where in hell is that ruddy bos’n? Aft there an’ git that hawser on th’ poop an’ ready to pass daown to the tug!” Then came a kick at the half-deck door. “Turn out, naow, an’ single them lines aft here!” “Aye, aye, sir!” cried Thompson, and he went out on deck followed by Donald.

The grey dawn was dimming the light of the gas-jets and the morning looked clammy and cold. A number of men were working around the barque’s decks, and there was a crowd of people on the dock looking on. Up the poop ladder scrambled the two boys—Thompson leading—and they proceeded to the port bitts—there to wrestle with a snakey wire mooring hawser and drag it aboard through a quarter-chock. There was a light in the cabin and it shone up through the skylight. McKenzie thought it must be nice and warm and homey down below as he tugged on the cold, wet wire, grimy with coal-dust, and hard on his tender hands.