"Were you ever shipwrecked?" the boy asked
recharged his pipe with great care before continuing:
"Give me an old wind-jammer for weatherin' a gale. You never know what's going to happen to these new-fangled steam contraptions. The ship's engines was 'most shook to pieces after two days of it, and we all made up our minds we'd seen the last of New York or anywhere else on dry land. The ship was leakin' enough to scare any one, and it was too rough to use the hand-pumps. We'd drifted some distance out of our course between Fanning and Christmas Islands when the current and wind took us under the lee of another island, and that saved us. Before you could say 'knife' we had the anchor down and were ridin' as comfortable and snug as any man could want.
"We sheltered for three days under that bit of a place. As a rule, you don't get much besides low coral islands in them waters, but there was a hill on this one. I remember that, from where we were lyin', part of the island looked a good deal like a camel's back.
"We were anchored off a little lagoon, and one day the captain sees something that might have been a wreck half buried in the sand. When the gale had spent itself he went ashore in a boat, thinkin' p'raps there might be a chance of a bit of salvage. But there wasn't. It was an old bark that must have been lost some years ago. We reckoned she'd struck a reef of rocks outside the lagoon, drifted over them afterwards, and landed inside the cove where we found her. Only the stumps of her masts were left. I remember her name. We could just make it out on a copper plate where the bell had hung. She was the Hatteras."
"Had the crew been saved!" Dave asked.
"Bless you, I dunno," replied the mariner. "There's hundreds and hundreds of ships breakin' to pieces off the track of regular traffic, and only the sea knows what became of the men on 'em; and she don't tell. No, siree! she holds her secrets fast."
"But didn't the people on the island know?" the boy queried.
There was a comical look in the old man's eyes as he regarded his questioner.
"Say, sonny," he said, "you don't think there's trolley-cars runnin' and department stores on every little two-by-four dump in the South Seas!"
"I thought there might be a few natives," Dave suggested.
"Well, sometimes you find a bunch of them stoppin' on an island, but we didn't see anything livin' there except a few turtles and sea-birds that knew nothing and cared less about how the Hatteras got there. You never know what luck is comin' your way when you're a sailor. It might be our turn to get piled up on a rock after we leave here to-night at high water."
Somebody on deck called to the mariner. Dave, with a curious feeling, watched him clamber over the side and disappear. At high water the old salt was to begin a new series of adventures, all with the smack of the sea in them. In his imagination the boy depicted the mariner undergoing hairbreadth escapes and encountering perils of every description, all of which he would overcome so that when the ship reached port he could sit contentedly in a swinging cradle, painting the hull, and applying innumerable matches to a most obstinate pipe.
Dave came of sea-going stock, the Hallards having followed the sea for generations. Dave's father created a record in his early manhood by driving a clipper from Hong Kong to San Francisco in thirty-three days; and old Phineas Hallard, David's grandfather, had been a pioneer in the copra trade with the West Indies.
From one window of his home in Brooklyn the boy could obtain a panoramic view of the ceaseless traffic in the harbor to and from New York—big, stately mail-boats with tugs puffing fussily at their side; mysterious, bird-like sailing-ships with crowded canvas; strings of barges in tow; rusty and lazy tramp steamers homeward bound after wonderful voyages to foreign lands. The sight of these messengers of the deep stirred something in the blood of Dave Hallard. He liked to go down to the wharf on his way home from school and drift into conversation, just as he had done to-day, with men who had sailed to distant ports. On this occasion he had been lucky. The old mariner with the paint-brush had been full of reminiscences; and for the first time, Dave, as he walked home, felt that the glamour of the sea was something real to him—something that was bound to have a vital influence over him. Hitherto his life had been wrapped up in school, sports, and his home; but now it was dawning on him that there was a great world outside that in which he had moved so far, a world in which he would, sooner or later, take his place. Some day he, too, might stand on a ship scudding before the breeze, under the wonderful Southern Cross where flying-fish skimmed the water and turtles lived on desert islands. He threw out his chest a little and sniffed the crisp air of early spring straight from the broad Atlantic. It seemed good. He felt a vague regret that he was not with the old mariner on the tramp steamer, learning the mysteries of sails and halyards and hovering on the brink of great unknown adventures. Dave was quiet when he entered the house.
His Aunt Martha, who had been a mother to him ever since he could remember, glanced at him curiously several times, thinking something was worrying the boy, for he was usually bubbling over with good spirits.
"What's amiss, Dave?" she asked at last, while preparing supper. "You're not sick, are you?"
"I'm all right," he said, coming out of a reverie with a start. "I was only thinking, Aunt Martha, what do people do when—when they want to be sailors?"
"For the land's sake, this boy has got it too!" she exclaimed, with a touch of pathos in her voice. "All the Hallards go the same way, and there's no stopping them as soon as they get out of short pants."
Dave's thoughts were far away. The sting of salt air on his cheeks that afternoon, and the sailor's reminiscences, had stirred him strangely. Hitherto he had not been directly thrown into association much with sailors. True, there were in his home a dozen distinctive signs that his father had spent many years at sea—a full-rigged four-master careening over on a painted ocean, under a glass case, in the parlor; two assagais and a knobkerrie picked up at some South African port; a compass and an old brass sextant kept in a sacred place; a pair of powerful binoculars; strangely carved figures which might at one time have been idols in some heathenish land. But these relics had been collected years before. Andrew Hallard gave np the sea soon after Dave was born.
"Supper is ready," said Aunt Martha, resignedly. "Go and tell your dad."
Dave obeyed mechanically.
"The sea is calling this boy already," Miss Hallard said a little later as she served their frugal meal. "He's puzzling how to get afloat now."
Captain Hallard cast an uneasy glance at his son. He had always expected this eventually, but somehow the possibility of the wrench had seemed a long way off.
"There's time enough to think about that, lad," he declared; but even as he said it he knew the boy's days ashore must be numbered now. Once, long ago, he, and generations of his menfolk, had passed through the same phase.
Dave was Captain Hallard's only son, and there was a strong affinity between them. The man dreaded the moment when his boy must go, only to return occasionally between long voyages, but he knew the power with which the sea must be calling Dave.
There had been a time when a business career had seemed probable for Dave. That was when Andrew Hallard first gave up the sea. He had made a considerable fortune by sea trading and wise investment. Everything appeared rosy in those
