SOON after daylight on a raw and chilly March morning the masthead lookout cried “Land-ho!” And the officers and crew of the North Cape knew that their voyage across the Atlantic had reached its last stage. Captain Griffith was on the bridge, as most careful commanders are on entering the busy English Channel; and Kit was there too, eager for a first sight of the Old World. An hour later the Scilly Islands could be seen plainly without a glass, though at that distance they looked like a single island with ships’ masts growing upon it like trees. Kit had read as much as possible in the Captain’s books about the places he was to see, so he knew that the group is composed of about fifty small islands, and that what looked like ships’ masts were the signal poles upon which are announced the arrival and departure of more vessels than are signalled at any other place in the world.
The second officer was busy on deck making fast a series of six or eight signal flags to a line, and at a word from the Captain they were hoisted. A moment later a large black ball was run up on one of the poles on shore, and the flags were lowered, folded, and returned to the flag locker. It was done so quickly that Kit could hardly believe that those few stripes of bunting had accomplished so much in so short a time; but he knew that the flags said to the signalman on shore, “North Cape, from Barbadoes for London, eighteen days, with sugar”; and that when the signalman hoisted his black ball it said, “All right; I understand you.” And he knew, too, that almost before the flags were lowered a telegraphic message had gone to London, announcing the ship’s arrival, to be posted in the Maritime Exchange, where her agents would see it as soon as the Exchange opened for the day; and that long before that the news would have gone under the ocean by cable to be posted in the Exchange in New York, where it would appear a few hours later in the afternoon newspapers. So by the hoisting of those few flags the whole world was informed that the North Cape had made her voyage safely, and was approaching her destination.
“What’s the matter, Silburn?” the Captain asked, bringing his hand down on Kit’s shoulder. “You look sorry to have the voyage nearly ended. Would you rather turn round and go back?”
“No, sir!” Kit replied; “I’m anything but sorry. But I was just thinking what a tremendous lot there is to learn in this world. Here we have seen nothing but sky and water for eighteen days, and with only the sun and stars to guide you, you knew almost the exact minute when we should be here beside the Scilly Islands. Then you hoist a flag, and in ten minutes they know in New York and in Barbadoes that we have arrived. It is the most wonderful thing I ever saw.”
“Oh, no, Christopher,” the Captain answered; “you have seen stranger things than that. Do you see the sun coming up out of the water there to eastward? That is rather more wonderful, isn’t it? Every leaf on every tree is more wonderful than anything that man has done. If we knew half as much as we think we do, there would be no more sickness in the world, because we would have a cure for every disease; no more poverty, for the earth is full of wealth and we should know how to get it out; and instead of merely sending a few dots and dashes by a wire across the ocean, we should be able to see what they are doing over in New York, and talk to them. We may come to that some day.”
“I wish we had come to that now, sir!” Kit exclaimed. “If we could see all over the world, I should know where my father is, if he is alive.”
“It’s better as it is, my boy,” the Captain went on. “To see over the world would gratify your curiosity, but it would give you a great deal of worry. No, there are some mysteries of nature that we are better off not to understand, at least until we have advanced enough in all directions to understand that everything that happens is for the best. Still, we must always make the best of what we do know. Some people, for instance, know enough to go below when the breakfast bell rings. Come along.
“This is a great coast to learn history from,” the Captain continued, while they were eating breakfast. “A large share of the modern history of the world has been made in this channel. We don’t want to see a storm to-day, but if it had not been for a storm in this channel, you would most likely be a Catholic, and we should have an image of the Virgin Mary in the cabin.”
“Oh, yes, sir, I know about that,” Kit interrupted. “You mean the storm that broke up the great Spanish Armada. But the British say they had the Armada whipped before the storm came.”
“Trust the British for that!” the Captain laughed; “they won’t let even nature have any of the credit. But that is only one thing in a hundred. Here is Land’s End just off our port bow, on the coast of Cornwall. A few years ago they were all singing a song beginning:—
Now who was Trelawny, and why must he die? No, I’m not going to tell you; you can hunt it up in some of my books. Then in a few hours we will be passing a little town called Lyme Regis—a town that never amounted to much, but some years ago the whole world was anxious about what was happening there. Who was the prince who landed there with an army, and tried to make himself King of England? You can hardly name a spot along this whole coast, but has some important events connected with it.”
Within the next twenty-four hours Kit saw a great many places that before had existed for him only on paper. His father had often brought home some of Clark Russell’s sea-stories, and Kit had read them without stopping to think that the places mentioned in them were real places. But here was “The Lizard,” a high point surmounted by a light-house that looked like an old castle; and Bolt Head, and Portland Bill, then St. Alban’s Head, and St. Catherine’s Point. He had read of all of those. Then by the next morning they were well up the Channel; and although the French coast was near enough to be seen indistinctly, they were so close to the British shore that they had a good view of Brighton, Eastbourne, Hastings, and Dungeness, all of which Kit had heard of. Then they ran into the narrow straits of Dover, past Folkestone, South Foreland, Deal, Ramsgate, Broadstairs, North Foreland, and Margate, and headed straight for the mouth of the Thames.
“Now, then, Silburn,” Captain Griffith said, when they were fairly in the river, “your work will soon begin. I don’t know where this cargo is to be landed, and it’s your place to find out. I shall run up as far as Gravesend and wait there for orders from the agents. They ought to have a tug there to meet us; but if they don’t, you will have to go on to London and find out where we are to discharge. They may order us up to the docks, or keep us below here.”
“Yes, sir,” Kit answered, as if “running up to London” were an everyday affair with him.
“They have a saying over here,” the Captain went on, “that it’s not worth while to do your own barking when you keep a dog; so as you are the supercargo, you’d better do the barking, which, in this case, is to find out where we are to unload. I’ll lower the gig and set you ashore at Tilbury, just across the river from Gravesend, and you can get a train from there up to London, and go to the agents’ office; that is, of course, if they do not send some one to Gravesend to meet us.”
Kit went down to his room to make his papers ready, feeling anything but comfortable over this prospect. How was he to go to London alone, knowing nothing of the city, and make his way through strange streets to the office of a strange agent? Going to make the acquaintance of strangers was hard work for him at first, but he had grown used to that now; but to make his way about London was another matter. However, he did not let this worry him long.
“If I am going to be a child, afraid to go into a new city,” he said to himself, “I’d better be a cabin boy again. When a fellow undertakes to do man’s work, he must go at it like a man. Other youngsters have gone to London, I suppose, without being eaten.”
Notwithstanding his brave ideas, he looked with some anxiety for the agent when the North Cape came to a stop in the Thames opposite Gravesend and near the Tilbury shore. But no tug appeared, and it was plain that he was destined to make the trip to London.
“Now listen sharp to what I tell you,” Captain Griffith said, “and you will come through all right. We will set you ashore at Tilbury, and the railway station is right at the wharf. Buy a second-class ticket, and the train will carry you about twenty-five miles and set you down in Fenchurch Street station, in London. The agents, as you know, are Topping, Forwood & Hauts, at 32 Fenchurch Street, and that is only three or four blocks from the station. But that part of the city is greatly crowded, and rather than waste time by your losing yourself, I want you to go up in a hansom. You will find scores of them in front of the station, and the fare will be one shilling. Here is a pound in English silver change, which I will charge to you. And before doing your own business with the agents, have them send me a telegram saying where we are to discharge cargo. Is that all plain?”
“Yes, sir,” Kit answered; “I think I can carry that through without making any slips.”
The gig landed him at Tilbury wharf, and he immediately found himself in a different world. His ticket he bought at the “booking-office,” and when he went through to the train its antiquated appearance made him smile. The cars were like little square boxes, not much bigger than a street car, but divided into compartments holding eight persons each, with the doors on the sides; and the engine looked like the small locomotives of the elevated railroads in New York.
The hour’s ride took him first through open fields that looked strangely green for the time of year, then past a settlement of immense gas tanks, through several small towns, and then among such a maze of houses that he knew he must be in London. When the train stopped in Fenchurch Street station, he had no need to inquire his way to the street, for he had only to follow the crowd. Down the long steps he went through the lower part of the station, and found himself for the first time in a crowded London street.
The Captain was right about the hansoms; there stood a row of them reaching almost out of sight, and he went up to one of the nearest and asked the driver:—
“Can you take me to No. 32 Fenchurch Street?”
The driver looked at him a moment, and shook his head doubtfully.
“I s’pose it kin be done, sir,” he answered, “but it’s a-goin’ to be consid’able of a job, h’account of this ’ere crowd. It’s all a-owin’ to the funeral. You see the Prince o’ Wiles’s mother-in-law she’s gone an’ died, sir, an’ they’re a-buryin’ of ’er hin the Temple this harternoon, an’ the streets is blocked. But Hi kin tike you ’round cirkewetous-like, sir.”
“Well, get me there as soon as you can,” Kit said; and he stepped in, and the driver shut the two little half-doors, and they set off. Certainly he had never before seen streets so crowded. The driver turned off at the first corner, but even in the side streets he could barely make his way through the crush. On and on they went, turning here and turning there, but everywhere the crowd was the same; and in every street Kit kept his eyes open for a look at the procession, but saw nothing of it. A quarter of an hour passed, a half hour, and still they were dodging through the throng.
Suddenly Kit gave one of his knees a tremendous slap and began to laugh.
“Didn’t they come near doing me for a countryman!” he said to himself. “The Prince of Wales’s mother-in-law, indeed! Why, she was the Queen of Denmark, and must have died before I was born. Anyhow, she wouldn’t be buried in London; and this is no funeral crowd in the streets; it’s all hansoms and ’busses and trucks—the usual London crowd, no doubt. The cabby sees I am a stranger and will get as much out of me as he can.”
At length the hansom drew up in front of No. 32 Fenchurch Street, and Kit stepped out, and handed the driver a shilling.
“Wot’s this for?” cabby asked, pretending to be very much surprised “It’s six shillin’, sir, by the wiy we ’ad to come. Hi ought to say ten, but Hi’m willin’ to make it six.”
“Oh, I guess not,” Kit laughed. “A shilling’s a good big fare for the distance. It’s too bad about the poor Prince of Wales, isn’t it?”
Although cabby had climbed down from his high seat and was assuming a very belligerent look, Kit felt bold to make this mention of the funeral because he saw a big policeman walking slowly toward them on the sidewalk, and he felt sure that the driver would not care to have the question referred to the authorities. And he was right about this; cabby growled a moment about a poor man having to live, but accepted the shilling, and drove away before the officer reached them.
It was surprising how easily and quickly the business was done with the agents. They sent a telegram at once to Captain Griffith, informing him that he was to unload at Gravesend; and in a few minutes Kit was talking with them as freely as if he had been taking cargoes to London for years. He could not help noticing how much easier it was for him now to become acquainted with people than it had been at first. The rough edges were wearing off, and instead of a ship’s boy he was becoming a man of business. It was easier, he found, to manage a cargo in London than in the West Indian ports, because everything was done in a more business-like way; and a cargo of sugar, being all in large parcels, was much easier to handle than a miscellaneous cargo. When he had received all the instructions the agents had to give him about the sugar, he found that a young clerk from the office was to accompany him back to Gravesend to arrange for storing the sugar in a bonded warehouse.
“This is Mr. Watkins, one of our junior clerks,” the head of the firm said. “Mr. Silburn, supercargo of the North Cape, Watkins. You can travel to Gravesend together, as Mr. Watkins has to see the warehousemen.”
Kit was a little surprised at the appearance of his new companion. Mr. Watkins was about his own age, perhaps a trifle older and taller, with rosy cheeks, and a voice that seemed, whenever he spoke, to come up from the very soles of his shoes. He wore a long black frock coat, rubbed a little shiny on the shoulders and elbows, and a shiny high silk hat; and as they went down the stairs together, he drew on a pair of leather-colored kid gloves.
“You’re—ah—aren’t you very young, you know, to be a supercargo, Mr. Silburn?” the young clerk asked.
“Well, I’m growing a little older every day,” Kit answered.
“You must have paid—aw—aw—a heavy premium to get into such a place at your age,” Watkins went on.
“Premium?” Kit repeated; he did not understand the English system of paying a premium to have a boy apprenticed to any business.
“Y-a-a-s,” Watkins continued. “My father had to pay a hundred pounds to get me into this office, and I’ll not earn enough to pay my board for the next two or three years.”
“We don’t pay any premiums in our country,” Kit exclaimed. “A boy or young man gets a salary there for working, and the more he’s worth the more he gets.”
“Aw, really!” Mr. Watkins exclaimed. “No wonder America is such a good country for young men. I’ve often thought of going over there, don’t you know, if I could only get the chance.”
At first Kit felt something of a dislike for the young Englishman, perhaps on account of his peculiar style of dress and strange manner of talking. But when he came to know him better, the dislike melted away, for he found Watkins to be a very clever fellow.
Instead of going to the railway station they went in the other direction, down to the end of London Bridge, and there took one of the little river steamers for Gravesend.
“I want to show you some of the sights of London,” Watkins said, “and when I go over to America, you can show me around New York.”
“Oh, I’ll do that,” Kit readily promised, “if I am at home. So this is London Bridge, is it? I’ve often heard of it, and the great crowds continually crossing it.”
“Have you any bridges as large as that in America?” Watkins asked.
Kit was on the point of replying that there were a great many very much larger; but he caught himself in time, remembering that it is not well to boast of one’s own country in a foreign land.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “we have some as large as that; and some of our rivers are quite as large as the Thames, I think.”
“Really!” Mr. Watkins exclaimed; “I should hardly have thought it. But here comes the boat.” And they stepped aboard a steamer that Kit thought a very small one, compared with the American boats; and his companion soon began to point out places of interest.
“There is the Tower of London,” he said. “I will take you in there some day, if you like. And there is St. Catherine’s dock, and next are the London docks, and then the East India docks—you must have heard of them. Here on the other side is the great Greenwich observatory. That ought to interest you, for more than half the ships afloat take their time from the big Greenwich clock. You see the river is very crooked. These straight places between the bends we call ‘reaches.’ We have come through Greenwich Reach and Woolwich Reach, and now we get to Barking Reach, Halfway Reach, and Long Reach.”
By the time they got to Gravesend Kit felt that he had seen a great deal of London for a first visit of two or three hours. And he had made one acquaintance at least, and had done his supercargo’s business with the agents as far as it could be done on the first day. There was hardly any spot he had seen that he had not heard of before; for his father had made many voyages to the great European city, and had often told them stories about London.
When they landed, Mr. Watkins went in search of the warehousemen, and Kit found that he had not far to go, for on receipt of the telegram the North Cape had moved up to one of the Gravesend wharves. He went into the cabin and exchanged a few words with the Captain, and soon afterward he met Tom Haines on deck.
“Say, Silburn,” Tom asked, “what did you say was the name of the schooner your father was on when he was wrecked?”
“The Flower City,” Kit answered, much surprised at the question.
“I thought so,” Tom went on. “Then I have some news for you.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense over it, Tom,” Kit begged. “You know how you would feel about it if it was your own father.” In spite of his efforts to remain cool he felt his hand shaking a little.
“Oh, don’t be excited about it,” Tom continued. “I haven’t found your father, you know, or anything of that kind. But there’s a man aboard the ship who was before the mast on the Flower City when she was lost.”
“No!” Tom exclaimed. “Then he’s the first one of the crew who has ever been heard of! Now don’t keep me waiting, Tom; where is the man?”
“He’s on deck, up forward,” Tom answered. “It’s an old sailor they call Blinkey, because he has such a squint. He has a friend in our crew and came aboard to see him, and I happened to overhear him telling about his shipwreck in the Flower City. I thought that was your father’s vessel, so I got into a talk with him and told him about you, and made him promise to wait till you came back. He knew your father very well.”
“Blinkey!” Kit repeated. “Why, the very last time father was home he told us some funny stories about an old Irish sailor called Blinkey. It must be the same man.”
He hurried forward, and soon found the old man talking to a group of the sailors, still telling of his adventures in the Western World.
“And you’re Mr. Silburn’s lad!” Blinkey exclaimed, when Kit went up to him. “A fine, well-growed lad, too, with the look of your daddy in your eyes. And you’re a-learnin’ this bad trade, are you?”
One of the men nudged the old man and whispered that he was talking to the supercargo, whereupon he scraped the deck with one foot in lieu of a nod, pulled the peak of his cap, and gave the band of his trousers a nautical hitch.
“It’s beggin’ yer pardon I am,” he went on, “me not knowin’ as how I was speakin’ to a officer. But it’s the fine man yer father is, lad—I mean Mr. Silburn. I never shipped with a better mate.”
“Is!” Kit exclaimed. “Then do you know whether he is alive?”
“It’s not me that’s knowin’, sir,” Blinkey replied. “He was in a good tight boat the last I set eyes on ’im, but there’s no sayin’. I was drownded mesilf in that wreck, an’ that was the third time. But a sailor havin’ nine lives, like a cat, I’ve six yet to dispose of.”
Kit was kept in agony by the slowness of the old man in coming to the point and the frequent interruptions of the sailors, so he took Blinkey up to his stateroom, where they could talk in peace.
“Now tell me about the voyage, Mr.—Mr.—”
“Blinkey,” the old man interrupted. “It’s so long since I’ve had any other I’ve forgot what it was. Well, sir, as I was a-sayin’, I shipped for Ameriky in the bark Margate, and she took fire an’ burnt in New York bay, so there was Blinkey out of a job. But I wasn’t a man in them days to stay long on shore, sir, so I looks about—”
“Yes!” Kit interrupted, fearing that another long yarn was coming. “But the Flower City.”
“I was a-gettin’ to that, sir,” the old man went on, without hastening in the least. “So I looks about, as I was a-sayin’, an’ a berth offers on the Flower City, an’ I ships on her. Well, sir, we made two v’yages down the coast, an’ then we loaded with machinery for New Orleans. Ah, it was that there machinery as done us up, sir. All went well till we run into a gale off Hatteras; an’ we’d ’a’ pulled through that if the cargo’d been better stowed. But we had a heavy load on deck, an’ some of the big machines carried loose. Ah, it oughtn’t to be allowed, sir, that it oughtn’t, to carry heavy cargo on deck.”
“And then?” Kit asked. It was to him the most interesting thing he had ever listened to; and the old man was so slow in coming to the point!
“Then we give a lurch, sir, and over we went. Both our starboard boats was under water, but we’d two on the port side, an’ we took to them. Your father steered one, and the Captain the other, an’ I was in the Captain’s boat. Night was a-comin’ on, an’ the last I see of Mr. Silburn he was a-headin’ his boat about sou-sou-east, an us a-followin’. That was the last, sir.”
“And you?” Kit asked.
“Me, is it? I was drownded. Nex’ mornin’ we was all dead. The sea was too heavy for a small boat well loaded, an’ that night a wave struck her an’ she went to pieces. I don’t know what I laid hold of when everything went from under us, but it must ’a’ been some of the wreckage; for some time next day I found myself on board a Spanish brig, with a hole stove in the side of my head, an’ no notion of what had happened to me arter the boat went to pieces. The brig took me across the ocean to Barcelona, an’ after a while in hospital there I worked my way back to London. Since that crack on the head I haven’t been no use on a wessel, so I’ve got a job here in the big warehouses. An’ that’s the whole story, sir. What became o’ that there other boat is more nor I can say. But if it was my father as was in her, sir, I’d be a-lookin’ any day fer him to come home. She was a better boat than I was in, an’ you see I’m safe on shore, though I was drownded as dead as ever anybody was. Leastways, I hope Christopher Silburn didn’t come to no harm, for he was always werry kind to me, lad—always werry kind to me.”
“Thank you,” Kit said, in a husky voice, seeing that the old man seemed to feel badly over the probable loss of his former mate. “But I have very little hope left, after what you tell me. Your being saved was almost a miracle, and we can hardly look for two miracles in the same shipwreck. You saw the Flower City go down, did you?”
“Went down right before our eyes, sir,” Blinkey answered, “less than five minutes after we left her. She couldn’t do nothin’ else, sir, with them iron castin’s in her.”
“Was there water in either boat?” Kit asked; “or provisions, or a compass?”
“Nothin’ in neither boat but the seats an’ oars, sir,” Blinkey replied; “there wasn’t no time. Why, we couldn’t even lower the boats; had to just cut ’em away, sir. An’ that reminds me. Did you ever see that before, sir?”
As he spoke the old sailor put one hand into his trousers pocket and drew forth a large iron-handled pocket knife, such as sailors often carry. The handle was polished bright by long rubbing against the pocket and its other contents.
“See it before!” Kit exclaimed; and his eyes moistened as he took the knife in his hand. “I should think I had seen it before! My father carried that knife as long as I can remember, and I often used to whittle with it when he was at home. Here’s a scar on the palm of my left hand now where I once cut myself with it.”
“Yes, sir, that was your father’s knife,” the old sailor answered. “He handed it to me that last night to cut the boat’s lashings with. But he couldn’t wait to get it back, and I put it in my pocket. The knife belongs to you, my boy—Mr. Silburn, I mean. You must take it, sir.”
“Thank you,” Kit murmured, very willing to accept the gift. “I am glad to have even that much from the wreck of the Flower City, though I hope for more. And I want to take down your address, so that I can find you in the future if necessary. Where will a letter reach you?”
“I don’t exactly know, sir,” the sailor replied, “for I haven’t had such a thing for many a day. I think if you was to direct it to Blinkey, an’ send it to the ‘Star an’ Garter’ public house in Gravesend, though, sir, they’d know who it was for an’ git it to me.”
While the old man was bowing and scraping himself out, Kit slipped into his hand all the change he had left from the pound the Captain had given him, and then hurried through his supper. He had devoted that evening to a long letter home, giving an account of the voyage and what he had seen in London. But now he had even a longer letter to write, and on a very different subject.