THE CASTAWAYS (continued 3)
Reading edition
“He is sort of tore up in his mind, sir, between following you on the chance of another fancy voyage and duckin’ into the jungle with me.”
“Tell him to go with you, Jack.”
“Well, Captain O’Shea, I hope I’ll have the pleasure of sailing with you again. I’ve enjoyed it,” exclaimed the soldier.
“If you need money, Jack, what I have is yours. I have a bit stowed away for emergencies.”
“You can stake Jiminez and me to a meal-ticket in Jamaica and the price of a little boat, sir, and I’ll pay the loan out of the first Spanish officer I pot with the old Springfield.”
When the stately Caronic steamed into the harbor of Kingston the passengers crowded her rail to admire the verdure-clad mountains and the lovely vales lush with palms and bananas. The excursionists planned to spend the day ashore, and after they had disembarked, the crew of the Fearless and Colonel Calvo’s Cubans filed down the gangway. Miss Hollister, Nora Forbes, and Gerald Van Steen were waiting to bid them farewell and God-speed. They had lived and suffered so many things together that it was difficult to realize that this was the journey’s end.
Gerald Van Steen spoke awkwardly and with much feeling.
“You have been very good to us, Captain O’Shea. I shall not make an ass of myself by offering you money. But perhaps I can help you to find another ship, and the house of Van Steen & Van Steen will always be at your service.”
“I have me doubts that a highly respectable banking-house will care to back my enterprises,” replied O’Shea. “But now that Johnny Kent has violent symptoms of mendin’ his ways there may be hope for me. You were a good shipmate, Mr. Van Steen. If ever ye want a job, I will be glad to sign you on as a stoker.”
“Will you dine with us at the hotel to-day?”
“Thank you, but I must look after my men.”
The farewell between Nora Forbes and Captain O’Shea had been said on the beach in the starlight. Now their glances met.
“Good-by and God bless ye,” said he. “The voyage seems like a dream, no doubt.”
“Perhaps it may some day, but not yet,” she told him.
“My dear friends, that voyage was the realest thing that ever happened,” was the earnest declaration of Johnny Kent, and no dissent was heard from that shipwrecked and marooned spinster, Miss Katharine Hollister.