Tom Fairfield at Sea: or, The Wreck of the Silver Star. Chapman Allen

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СКАЧАТЬ another thing,” went on the captain. “It seemed to me that the sight of you scared him.”

      “Nonsense!” exclaimed Tom, though he was aware that the captain was eyeing him sharply. “Why should he be disturbed on account of me?”

      “I can’t say, I’m sure. Did you ever see him before?”

      “Not that I know of,” replied Tom. “Though when I heard his voice it sounded like some one I’d heard before, though I couldn’t be quite sure, and just now I couldn’t even place the voice.”

      “Well, perhaps I’m mistaken,” admitted the captain. “No matter. Have you got your stateroom in shape?”

      “Yes, but I guess I can put a few finishing touches on it. I’ve been so interested in watching our start that I haven’t been below much.”

      “Well, I’m going down to get something to eat,” went on the commander with a smile, “and if you’d like to come along I can offer you a meal,” for he had arranged that Tom should sit at his table.

      “I will!” exclaimed the lad. “This sea air makes me hungry.”

      “I thought it would,” responded the commander, with a laugh. “Keep her on this course, Mr. Merton,” he said to the first mate, who had come up on the bridge, at a signal, to take charge of the wheel.

      “I wonder if I ought to knock on his door and ask him if he’s hungry?” spoke the captain, half aloud, as he and Tom went below.

      “Who?” inquired our hero, though the question was not exactly addressed to him.

      “That passenger I was speaking of – Mr. Pierson Trendell his name is – the one who came on board late. He was recommended to my care by a friend of one of the owners of this steamer, though I don’t know him personally. He’s going to Honolulu for his health I understand. Guess I’ll have to be decent to him, though I didn’t take much of a notion to him, and I don’t like anyone who can’t arrive on time.

      “But I’ll take a chance, and ask him to come with us and have a little lunch. As you say, this sea air does give one an appetite.”

      They were on the berth deck now – the deck where Tom’s stateroom, an outside one, was located. The captain turned into a passageway, and paused before the door of a room not far from our hero’s.

      “This is his berth,” he remarked as he rapped on the panel.

      “Who’s there?” came a quick demand.

      “Captain Steerit,” was the reply. “Would you like to come to lunch with me, Mr. Trendell?”

      “In a private room?” was the query.

      “No, but at my private table.”

      “Any one else?”

      “Humph! You’re mighty particular,” murmured the commander. “Why, yes,” he made answer in a louder tone. “My friend, Tom Fairfield, is coming with us. Shall I have a place laid for you?”

      “No, thank you – er – that is, I’m not feeling very well. The motion of the boat, you know – in fact I haven’t quite got my sea legs on. Some other time, Captain.”

      “Oh, very well, just as you like,” and with rather a frown of annoyance the captain passed on.

      “Very strange,” he murmured, half to himself, but loud enough for Tom to hear. “They said he was an experienced sailor, and had been in all sorts of rough blows. And yet he’s seasick when the water is as calm as a millpond. I can’t understand it,” and the puzzled captain shook his head.

      “Can a person get seasick more than once?” asked our hero, rather anxious on his own account.

      “Oh, yes, there are lots of such cases. And again there are some who never suffer from it. It’s all a matter of nerves, I think. It never bothers me, and yet I had a first mate once, who was always very sick the first two days out, and then he’d be as steady on his legs as a sea lawyer. But every new voyage it would be the same way. But come in to lunch now,” and he led the way to a private table, where Tom was soon putting away a substantial meal that was more like dinner than luncheon.

      There was only a slight motion to the Silver Star now, hardly any more than to Tom’s motorboat when he had been out in a blow, and he was beginning to feel that he would not suffer from seasickness.

      Captain Steerit left him to his own devices after the meal, for the commander had many things to look after. Tom went to his own stateroom, which he put in shipshape. Then he went on deck again.

      The Golden Gate was fading from sight now, and the routine of a vessel out at sea was well under way. Tom saw several passengers, but the man he had begun to classify as the “mysterious one,” did not appear.

      “If he’s going to be seasick now’s his chance,” mused Tom, for there was now quite a decided roll to the ship.

      But it did not bother our hero, who was feeling in excellent health. Of course he could not help worrying about his father and mother, but he looked on the brightest side, and made up his mind that if there was any possibility of rescuing them he would do so.

      It was coming on toward evening, and Tom was wondering how he would sleep on his first night at sea. As he passed near the bridge, on the upper deck, he saw Captain Steerit and the first mate in conversation.

      “I can’t understand it,” the commander was saying. “He comes on board as a man who is traveling for his health, and who wants to get all the sea air he can. Yet when I give him an outside stateroom, near young Fairfield’s, he goes and changes it before I know it. He won’t come out to lunch, and now you tell me he asks to have all his meals served in his cabin.”

      “That’s it,” said the mate. “He sent the steward to ask me, and I thought it best to speak to you.”

      “Quite right. Well, I suppose we’ll have to let him have his way, but I can’t understand it. He wants fresh air, but he won’t come out and get it,” and the captain filled his lungs with the salty, ocean breeze. “Very puzzling! Very puzzling!”

      CHAPTER V

      THE WATERSPOUT

      “That mysterious man – they’re speaking of him,” said Tom softly, as he turned away. “I’m glad, after all, that he did not keep the stateroom near mine. There may be no harm in him, and he may be all right, but he certainly acts queer, and I don’t want to have anything to do with him.”

      Tom retired that night, rocked by the gentle motion of the ship. He knew, now, that he was not going to be seasick in ordinary weather, though he realized that he still had to undergo the test of a storm.

      “I wonder what it’s like?” he mused. “There very likely will be big waves and a powerful wind. But I hope we don’t have one. I want to make a quick voyage, and a storm would delay us.”

      Then he thought of the storm that had wrecked the Kangaroo and this brought the possible fate of his father and mother to his mind. He took out, and read over again, for perhaps the fiftieth time, the clipping from the newspaper that had given him his first hint of the bad news. There were one or two other clippings from other papers, telling the same story, and a later one, confirming the first СКАЧАТЬ