The Young Supercargo: A Story of the Merchant Marine

CHAPTER X.
A LETTER FROM THE STATE DEPARTMENT.

“I THINK it’s a mean way to treat a fellow, Kit,” Harry Leonard complained when they were alone together. “Oh, you needn’t think I’m going to be calling you Mr. Silburn when nobody else can hear. I want a chance to see something of London, and you know very well it’s only fair I should have. I haven’t been allowed ashore since we came into the Thames. You always used to go ashore when you were cabin boy, for you’ve told me so.”

“That was a little different,” Kit exclaimed. “I was doing a supercargo’s work when I was cabin boy, and I had to go ashore on business. But I think the Captain will let you go up to town if you ask him. I know he likes you, from the way he speaks of you. You’re a very different boy, Harry, if you don’t mind my saying so, from what you were when you came on board. We all have to learn, I suppose, that we don’t get things for favors, but by working for them, and you are doing your work well.”

“Thawnk you very much, Mr. Supercargo!” Harry retorted, taking off his cap in mock humility. “I like to be appreciated by my superiors.”

“Well, it’s a fact,” Kit laughed. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. All this stuff on the wharf will be aboard by two or three o’clock, and if you like I will ask the Captain to let you go up to London with me after that. You know it is daylight here till eight or nine o’clock in the evening.”

“Hooray for you!” Harry shouted. “If you ask, it’s a sure thing, for you get whatever you want. I wish I had such a pull with the Captain as you have.”

“I have no ‘pull’ at all—” Kit started to say; but he was interrupted by footsteps on the companionway, and a moment later Captain Griffith entered the cabin with a handful of letters.

“There seems to be something for most everybody in this lot,” he said, laying the letters upon the big table and looking them over. “Captain Griffith, Captain Griffith, Mr. Mason, Mr. Christopher Silburn, Mr. Hanway, Mr. Christopher Silburn—here are two for you, Silburn, so your folks have not forgotten you.”

Kit saw at a glance that one of the letters was from his mother and the other from Vieve; and the one from his mother was so large and thick that it rather alarmed him. He went to the corner of the long sofa and hurriedly opened it, and found two enclosures, besides a page or two in his mother’s handwriting.

“We are so flustered by these letters that we don’t know what to do,” Mrs. Silburn wrote. “But your sister and I both think that the best thing will be to send them right over to you, so that you will be sure to get them before you leave London. We have kept copies, in case they should be lost. Oh, Kit, do you think there is any chance that this man may be your dear father? I am afraid it is only exciting our hopes in vain, but we ought to do something about it, though we don’t know what. How could we ever get along without a great, big man like our Kit to advise us?”

After reading this mysterious introduction Kit turned hurriedly to the enclosures. The first was on a sheet headed “Bryant & Williams, Bridgeport, Conn.,” whom he immediately recognized as the owners of his father’s schooner, the Flower City.

Mrs. Christopher Silburn, Huntington, Conn. [the letter began]:

Please find enclosed a copy of a letter we have just received from the State Department at Washington, which explains itself. We have sent similar copies to the families of all the members of the crew of the schooner Flower City, as far as they are known. While we have slight hopes that the person referred to in the letter may have been a member of that unfortunate crew, we deem it only right to lay the information before you, that you may take whatever measures seem to you proper.

Very respectfully yours,

Bryant & Williams.

Kit was beginning by this time to chafe over the delay in getting at the mysterious information. But the other enclosure must give it, and he quickly unfolded the sheet.

State Department, Washington, D. C. [it began].

Office of the Fourth Assistant Secretary.

Folio G x R. No. 2814 F.

Messrs. Bryant & Williams, Bridgeport, Conn.

Dear Sirs: The department is informed by the Consulate at Wellington, New Zealand, that a patient who has been in the public hospital there for some months is supposed to be a shipwrecked American sailor. This man was landed in Wellington from the British ship, Prince Albert, having been picked up by that ship on the 27th of June last on a small unnamed island in the Pacific Ocean, where his three companions had died of hardship and starvation, and where he was reduced to such a mental and physical condition that he was unable to move or give any account of himself.

Since his reception in the hospital he has been restored to physical health, but he is still unable to give his name or place of residence, though from certain tests that have been applied it is believed that he is a native-born American citizen. He is of medium height with gray hair and beard, and looks sixty years old, though he is probably much younger.

The Life Saving Service has supplied this department with a list of all the American vessels that have been lost within the last two years; and a copy of this letter is sent to the owners of each of such lost vessels, as far as they can be traced, to enable them to communicate with the families of the lost crews.

Requests for information on the subject should be addressed to the Chairman of the Board of Governors, Public Hospital, Wellington, New Zealand; or to the American Consulate at that port.

Yours, etc.,

H. R. Battaway,

Chief Clerk to Fourth Assistant Secretary.

On opening the letter from Vieve he found that it was full of questions and surmises about the mysterious man in New Zealand, so he put that in his pocket to be read later on. The State Department letter was too important to let anything interfere with it. He read it again and again, and tried to estimate what the chances were that this man might be his missing father. Suppose there were twenty lost vessels, each with a crew of twenty men? That would give only one chance in four hundred. But one chance in forty thousand, he thought, would be a great thing. Sixty years old? His father was not nearly as old as that; and there was not a gray hair in his head. But who could say what suffering he might have gone through, or what changes it might have made in his appearance?

It was hard work to put those letters into his pocket and go on quietly checking his lists as the cargo came aboard; but it was necessary, and Kit did it. The engagement he had just made with Harry Leonard must be postponed, for he must have time to think, and then time to write some letters. But what was he to write?

All through the morning and until the last case of cargo on the wharf was put in the hold and duly checked off, the young supercargo stuck manfully to his work. Harry Leonard was disappointed when told that his trip to London would have to be put off, but when Kit explained the reason Harry was more than willing to wait.

“Why, they’d give him a big reception in Huntington,” he exclaimed, “if your father should come home alive.”

With all his thinking Kit could not decide upon a better course than to show the letters to Captain Griffith and ask his advice. “He knows more in five minutes than I know in a week,” he said to himself, “and his advice is sure to be good. It’s a valuable thing to have good friends to go to when you need advice.”

“It’s a strange case, Silburn,” he said at length. “I’ve been trying to figure out what happened to your father when his schooner went down. They took to the boats, and in the heavy sea your father’s boat went to pieces. He kept afloat on some piece of wreckage, and in the morning he was seen and picked up by a passing ship. She was an American ship, I should say, bound ’round the Horn for San Francisco or the northwest coast. But when they got into the Pacific that second ship was wrecked, and your father and three others made their way to a little island, where he was afterwards picked up by the British vessel and carried to New Zealand. Yes, it is all plain enough.”

“Why, Captain!” Kit cried; “do you really think so, sir?”

“I don’t say that I think so, or that I don’t think so,” the Captain answered. “I wanted to see whether there was any reasonable theory by which I could account for your father’s being found on a desolate little island in the Pacific. I see that there is; it might easily have happened just as I have described it. So we begin by knowing that it is possible that this man may be your father. And having reached that point we came to a sudden stop through somebody’s remarkable stupidity. Do you see how badly this inquiry has been managed?”

“Yes, sir,” Kit answered, “I think I do. They ought to have sent a photograph of the man and a full description.”

“Of course they ought!” the Captain declared, thumping his fist down on the desk. “The fullest description possible—his height, weight, color of his eyes, condition of his teeth, marks on his body, every possible particular. I suppose we must be satisfied that the State Department has taken the trouble to give even this much information about the case; but it would have been easy to give a little more. However, this oversight does not put an end to the business; it only entails a great waste of time. Now you have been thinking about this thing all day; what has it occurred to you ought to be done?”

“Well, sir,” Kit answered, “it seemed to me that the best way would be to write to the American consul at Wellington, and ask him to send a description of the man. If it is my father, he is nothing like sixty years old, but what he has gone through may make him look much older than he really is.”

“That’s it,” the Captain agreed. “That is exactly the proper thing for you to do. And write from here, at once; but have the answer sent to your home in America, for there is no telling where you may be. Now tell me something about your father. How tall a man was he?”

“He was just five feet ten and a half inches, sir,” Kit replied. “I remember that very well, because he used to measure me when I was little and say, ‘I wonder whether you will ever be as tall as your father, youngster?’ It hardly looked likely then, but I am within about an inch of that now, and still growing.”

“Very well; put that down on this slip of paper; height, five feet ten and a half inches. Was he stout, or slender?”

“Just about medium, sir,” Kit went on; “I think he weighed about one hundred and sixty pounds. And he was dark in the hands and face, from the sun, and had dark brown eyes and hair to match, the hair just a little bit curly, like mine.”

“Put it all down,” the Captain said. “Were his teeth good or bad?”

“Oh, he had beautiful teeth, sir,” Kit declared. “He never had to go to the dentist’s, and they were as white and regular—well, I used to tell him they were almost as handsome as a set of false ones.”

“Put it down,” the Captain repeated. “And do you know whether there were any marks on his body that he could be identified by?”

“The only mark I know of was a long scar on his left temple, sir,” Kit answered, “running down like this;” and he drew a finger across his own temple to show the direction. “He got that when he had such a narrow escape from being killed. A block fell from aloft and came just near enough to make a gash in his skin. A quarter of an inch more would have killed him on the spot, of course; but he only laughed at it when he told us about it.”

“Ah, that is a good point; put it down. A man may lose his teeth, or grow fat or thin, or his hair turn gray, but he never can get rid of a scar. That cut on the temple will go further than anything else to tell us whether this is your father or not. Now when you write to the consul tell him all these things that you have told me, and as much more as you can think of. And there is another thing. To make such an inquiry as this, and get your father home, if it proves to be your father, will cost some money. You are willing to spend whatever you can afford, I suppose?”

“Why, Captain,” Kit exclaimed, “what would I care for money in exchange for my father! I would sell the last shirt off my back just to hear that he is alive. And we could raise a little money in Huntington, if it came to the worst. I know mother would spend her last cent to find him. But I think I can manage it myself, if it does not cost too much.”

“Well, Silburn,” the Captain said, laying his hand on Kit’s shoulder, “you have a good name, and that is always something to fall back on. I have a little money that I have saved year after year, and if you need more than you think, I will lend you a few hundred, and you can pay me interest on it and pay it off gradually. I should consider it quite as safe in your hands as if it remained in the bank.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Kit answered. “I am more grateful to you than I can tell you. But it will be months before we can hear from the consul, and by that time I shall have a little more money of my own. I want to send him a little money in the letter and ask him to have a photograph taken of the man in the hospital. If it is my father, I think we should recognize him, no matter how much he is changed.”

“That is a capital idea,” the Captain assented; “and by writing from here your letter will get to New Zealand much sooner than if you sent it from America.”

That evening Kit had his hands full with letter-writing. There was one to be written to his mother, and one to Vieve, and a note to Bryant & Williams, thanking them for their letter, and last of all, a long one to the consul at Wellington, in which he gave the fullest possible description of his father.

“The mention of some familiar names,” he wrote, “might cause him to remember things that he has forgotten, if, as I hope, it proves to be my father. He lives in Huntington, Connecticut, opposite the church, and my mother’s name is Emily Silburn. His two children are Genevieve and Christopher Silburn; he always called us Vieve and Kit. Our dog’s name is Turk. The Flower City was the schooner he was wrecked on. The scar I have mentioned looks whiter than the rest of his face. If he seems to recognize any of these names, that will be pretty good evidence that he is Christopher Silburn.”

“Ah, my!” Kit said to himself, rubbing his eyes after finishing the long letter, “this not knowing whether you have a father or not is bad business. But just suppose we should see him sitting again in his old chair in Huntington! I mustn’t think of that, though, for it may be only preparing for a disappointment.”

Captain Griffith approved of the letter to the consul when he read it; and when Kit asked permission for Harry Leonard to go up to London with him next day, it was given immediately.

“I don’t like to have my boys going into these big towns alone, getting into mischief,” he said; “but if Harry goes with you, that is a different matter. You know you are not a boy any more, but a supercargo; and you must keep Harry straight. By the way, Silburn, stand out there in the light a minute till I look at you. There; that is just the way I stood you out the night I rescued you from the policeman in Brooklyn. Do you know it occurred to me while you were describing your father this afternoon that you were giving almost an exact description of yourself? You must be very much like him.”

“I am glad to hear it, sir,” Kit laughed, “for he was always called a fine-looking man.”

When the Captain’s two “boys” took the ferryboat over to Tilbury in the morning, Harry was like a young colt in a spring pasture. No wonder, either, for he had not set foot off the North Cape’s deck before since she left New York. He was full of fun now that he was away from the restraint of the ship, and, like Kit, he was not disposed to admire everything simply because it was in a foreign country; on the contrary, most things he saw he regarded as fair game for ridicule.

“And they call these things cars, do they?” he asked, when they were seated alone in one of the compartments of the train. “Well, they look to me very much like our coal cars in America, with roofs put on them. I suppose they have such little windows because larger ones would be of no use; you never can see more than fifty yards in this country, on account of the fog. Did you ever see such a foggy hole? I know now why the sun never sets on the Queen’s dominions: it’s because it never rises, ‘don-cher-know?’ What do they want with an old Queen here, anyhow? I guess if a President’s good enough for us, it’s good enough for them.”

“I always thought you were an Irishman, Harry,” Kit laughed; “now I’m sure of it, from the way you find fault with the English. Wait till you see London; you may change your mind then.”

“Oh, London!” Harry sneered. “You’d think the sun rose out of the Thames and set in Buckingham Palace, to hear these Britishers talk. I’ll bet it’s not as fine a city as Bridgeport. Look at the big factories they have there, and the new court-house, and the—”

“We may as well get out here,” Kit interrupted, “as this is Fenchurch Street station and the end of the line. I don’t believe they’ll carry us any further.” He found it very entertaining and novel to act as a guide to London, particularly with a companion who looked upon everything from such original standpoints as Harry, and who was so determined to see nothing equal to America in the British capital.

Harry was so much interested in Kit’s accounts of the mummies and other curiosities in the British Museum, that they took a hansom and drove to the Museum first.

“This sort of thing will do occasionally in London,” Kit said, “where a cab costs a shilling. But we’ll have to come down to street cars again, or walking, when we get back to America.”

“Where are the high buildings, Kit?” Harry asked, after they had gone a few blocks. “These are all small affairs, so far. Can’t we have him drive past some of the tall buildings?”

“I’m afraid we should have hard work to find any,” Kit answered. “I have seen no buildings here more than six or eight stories high.”

“Six or eight stories!” Harry cried; “and they call this a great city! Why, there are some buildings in New York twenty-six stories high, and lots of them from twenty to twenty-five stories. Yes, it’s just as I expected: they brag so much about London, but I don’t believe it’s ‘in it’ at all beside America. They can’t fool me with their mummies, either, for I saw some in a museum in New York when I was there. I know a thing or two about dried Egyptians.”

As he was prepared to find fault with the mummies, it was not hard to be disappointed in them. “They’re a very ordinary lot,” he declared when he saw them. “Those in New York were all kings and emperors and such things, but these are just common people. They don’t look as life-like, either. Why, those fellows in New York seemed just ready to sit up and eat their dinner.”

Some mention being made of Buckingham Palace, Harry immediately became anxious to see it. “Not that I suppose it amounts to much,” he explained, “but we may as well see what sort of tenement houses they lodge their royal family in. Royal family, indeed! Why, in our country we’d elect a new queen every year or two if we had to have one at all.”

“Very well,” Kit assented; “I should rather like to see Buckingham Palace, too, and we can have a look at the Thames Embankment at the same time. We can walk over to Gower Street station and take the underground road to St. James Park station, and that is near the Palace. We both want to see the great underground railway, of course.”

Feeling surer of making his way in the main streets, Kit led Harry to Tottenham Court Road, and turned up Euston Road to the Gower Street station. In Euston Road they found a great many openings in the street and in the yards on each side, through which poured clouds of sulphurous smoke.

“Bah!” Harry cried, as one of the dirty clouds enveloped and half choked them; “there must be a sulphur mine underneath here, and it’s caught fire. Or do you suppose it’s a match factory?”

“I suppose these must be airholes for the underground road,” Kit replied; “for it runs under this street. But I don’t see how the people can stand such rank smoke, that’s a fact. And it’s cheerful to think that that’s the air we will have to breathe in the underground train.”

They bought their tickets for St. James Park station and went down two long and dirty stairways into the bowels of the earth, where they found a long cave arched with smoky bricks, dimly lighted with a half-dozen gas-jets, with a very dirty platform on each side and two tracks between them. Twenty or thirty other persons were waiting for the train, all breathing the thick smoky atmosphere, that coated their throats and made them cough.

In two or three minutes a faint rumbling began in one of the dark tunnels leading out of each end of the cave; and the rumbling grew louder and louder till it became a roar, and the train drew up. There was a great banging of doors, people got out and others got in, Kit and Harry scrambled into an empty compartment, and in a few seconds the lights of the platform faded away and they were in darkness save for a very dim gas-jet in the roof of the car.

“Now this is real luxury!” Harry laughed. “Everything you touch is black as a chimney, and the air you breathe is thick enough to cut. These tunnels would make good sewers, Kit. But do you think our folks would believe the Londoners really ride through such holes in the ground? Ain’t it simply frightful?”

“I shall have to agree with you this time,” Kit answered. “I had no idea the underground roads were as bad as this. It would be a terrible place for an accident, wouldn’t it, in these dark caves?”

They went on and on past station after station, and after half an hour of jolting and half suffocating Kit began to suspect that he must have made some mistake, for it was less than a mile from Gower Street to St. James Park. He took out his map and examined it as well as he could under the feeble light.

“See here, I’ll tell you what we’ve done,” he explained, “we’ve taken an outer circle train. You know this underground road runs in a small inner circle and a big outer circle. And we’re in the wrong train, that is carrying us away round the city. But no matter, it will bring us to St. James after a while. That’s rather a good joke on us, Harry, for a hansom would have taken us across in half the time and for half the money.”

“Oh, well,” Harry answered, “no matter. It’s just as well to get a good dose of the underground this time, for I never want to see the thing again. One dose is enough, well shaken and taken.”

It took them fifty minutes to reach the St. James Park station; and after they had climbed the long stairs to the surface they stood awhile on the edge of the park to get some fresh air into their lungs.

“It’s just as I expected,” Harry declared, “only a good deal worse. They don’t half know how to do things over here. And that’s Buckingham Palace, is it, where the Queen lives? Why, it’s only two stories high, and a basement! Now, Kit, you know as well as I do that this palace ain’t a patch to Mr. Barnum’s house out in Seaside Park, in Bridgeport. No, sir, it doesn’t compare with it.”

“Oh, Harry, you can’t please a fellow who’s determined not to be pleased,” Kit laughed. “When you come to London, you must make up your mind that things are better than anywhere else, and tell the people so. Then they’ll pat you on the back and say the Americans are their cousins.”

“How could I tell them?” Harry asked; “they don’t understand me when I speak to them, and I never half know what they say. I should think they might know how to speak their own language.”

By the time night came they had seen the new Thames Embankment, and Madame Tussaud’s waxworks show, Trafalgar Square, and Pall Mall, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and several of the curious old churches, and had walked through the Strand and Fleet Street, and many more of the busy parts of the city. And within forty-eight hours the Scilly signals were set in motion again, and over the wires flashed the brief announcement, “Passed, steamer North Cape, for New York.”