CHAPTER XXXI

THE MAGNIFICENT STEAMER

Louis Belgrave watched the boat, which was an elegant affair, as it approached the shore. When it had accomplished half the distance, the officer in the stern sheets took off his cap, and waved it vigorously in the air. Then the abandoned millionaire recognized the stalwart form of Captain Ringgold, and he returned the salute as earnestly as the other made it.

When he saw where the boat intended to land, Louis rushed to the shore and awaited its arrival. The men pulled with the precision of men-of-wars-men. At a short distance from the land up went the eight oars like a piece of clock-work. The bowman took his place in the fore-sheets with a boat-hook in his hand, and fended off as the keel ploughed into the soft sand. The boat looked like a fairy barge. The stern sheets were upholstered with crimson velvet; and the owner of the Guardian-Mother had never seen anything so luxurious, even in the cutters of the Blanche.

Captain Ringgold rose from his seat as soon as the keel touched the sand, and made his way to the bow, from which he leaped to the shore like a boy. Louis was there to receive him; and if there were tears in his eyes, they were tears of gladness, though perhaps his empty stomach was to some extent responsible for them. The captain rushed upon him with both hands extended, which Louis grasped with an energy which his feelings did not belie.

“I am exceedingly glad to see you, Mr. Belgrave!” exclaimed the captain, wringing the hands of the hungry millionaire.

“And I am heartily rejoiced to see you, Captain Ringgold,” replied Louis, wiping the tears from his eyes, though he could not for the life of him have told for what he was weeping.

“But what is the matter with you, my dear boy? you are actually crying. Have you any bad news from your mother?” asked the captain, who was now the commander of the Guardian-Mother, though he had never been formally invested with that office.

“I have heard nothing at all from her, sir,” answered Louis in a choking voice.

“What is the matter, then?”

“Which the poor young gentleman is ’alf starved, sir, if you please,” interposed Baldy.

“Not quite so bad as that, captain,” added Louis, trying to laugh. “I confess that I am hungry, and that I feel quite faint.”

“Poor fellow! I don’t understand it! But no talk till you feel better, my dear boy,” said Captain Ringgold, full of sympathy. “Only one question, and then not another word. Where is the Maud?”

“She sailed from this place day before yesterday at noon, and headed to the south-east as soon as she got out into deep water,” replied Louis. “She is forty-eight hours on her way to Bermuda.”

“That’s all now!” exclaimed the commander decidedly.

“I am able to talk, captain; I don’t need any nursing. I have not lived very well since we left the Blanche; and I have eaten next to nothing to-day, for the ham was not good, and the hardbread was dirty and smoky.”

“Have you anything to go on board of the steamer, Louis?”

“Nothing but my valise and overcoat.”

Captain Ringgold ordered a couple of men in the boat to assist Louis to his place in the stern sheets, and a couple more to put his baggage on board. While they were doing so, he walked over to the inlet, followed by Baldy.

“If you please, captain, will you ’ave the kindness to take me on board of the Guardian-Mother? for the young gentleman as owns her--Mr. Belgrave--told me as ’ow I should go with him,” said Baldy, who perhaps thought the commander had a veto on the promises of the juvenile owner.

“If Mr. Belgrave said you were to go on board, that is enough, in spite of any other person,” replied the captain, laughing at the simplicity of the cook. “I should not be likely in any case to leave you, or any other human being, in such a desolate place as this sandbank. I don’t understand this business at all. What is that wreck on the shore of the passage through?”

“That is the wreck of the Phantom, which she was burned the day we got ’ere by a hagent of Captain Scoble,” replied Baldy.

The commander of the steamer realized that there was a history to the expedition he had sent down the coast to look for the Maud, but he did not care to hear it mangled by the cook; and he hastened back to the boat, anxious now only to relieve the discomfort, if not the distress, of the owner of the Guardian-Mother. He put Baldy in the fore-sheets, and took his place in the stern.

“Up oars!” said the captain, who seemed to be in the practice of naval discipline; and at the command six of the eight oars went up to a perpendicular position. “Shove off!” he added; and the two bowmen pushed the boat from the sand into deep water. “Let fall!” and the oars dropped into the water as one. “Stern all! Give way!”

The barge, for that was the name of the owner’s boat, backed away from the shore, then came about, and pulled for the steamer. Captain Ringgold said nothing; and Louis did not feel like talking, for his stomach was still bothering him. He did not feel quite at home in the luxurious furnishings of the barge; but he looked the men at the oars over, and thought he had never seen a finer-looking set of seamen. They were all dressed in uniform, and on their naval caps were ribbons bearing the name of the steamer, Guardian-Mother, in gilt letters. The shipmaster had certainly attended to the smaller details of the fitting out of the vessel.

As the boat passed the bows of the steam-yacht, Louis discovered the name again; and he wondered at the expedition the captain had used in preparing the craft, though he had been thus occupied for three days. The boat went to the after-gangway, where the steps had been rigged out; and the commander assisted his youthful owner to mount to the deck. Louis was inclined to pause and admire the appearance of everything that met his gaze, but the considerate captain hurried him to the cabin.

“I am afraid you will get sick out of this affair, Louis,” said the commander very tenderly, as he seated him on a sofa. “I am sorry to find you in this feeble condition.”

“You need not be at all concerned about me, Captain Ringgold. I shall be all right as soon as I have had something to eat,” replied Louis. “I always have trouble when I go without my regular food; but I am not starving, and I am not in the least injured.”

“Sparks!” called the captain, and a colored steward came out of his pantry at the summons. “This young gentleman is the owner of the steamer. Get him some of the soup we had for lunch as quick as possible.”

Sparks bowed low to the owner, and then rushed out of the cabin to execute his mission.

“Something not too heavy is best for you to begin upon. You need a little nursing before you can come out all right, my boy. I have to get underway now, and lay the course for Bermuda; but I will send Mrs. Blossom to look out for you, for you need a woman’s care,” added the captain.

“Mrs. Blossom!” exclaimed Louis, astonished to hear the name of Uncle Moses’s housekeeper.

“She is the stewardess of the steamer. I went to see Squire Scarburn yesterday to ask him to recommend a woman to attend to the wants of your mother, after we have recovered her. Mrs. Blossom, who is the widow of a sea-captain, and has been to sea, heard me, and volunteered her services, saying that she needed a sea-voyage to restore her health. The squire consented, and that is why she happens to be on board.”

The captain called the woman, and then left the cabin. Mrs. Blossom was delighted to see another Parkite on board, and sorry to find him in such a feeble condition. While Sparks was setting the table for his lunch, Louis explained what ailed him, and what had caused it. The good lady was quite sure she could relieve him, and she went to the pantry, from which she presently returned with a potion in a glass. She insisted that he should take it, and he did so. It was very hot, and it warmed up his stomach at once.

The owner seated himself at the table at the summons of the steward. The dishes and the table-ware were of the finest quality, and Louis was bewildered by the magnificence which surrounded him on all sides. In fact, he began to feel something like a millionaire after his late experience on the sandbank. The soup was very nice; but Mrs. Blossom would not permit him to take anything else, except some toast and some fancy biscuits.

He ate heartily of the soup, and then he claimed he was entirely well. His pain was all gone, for his malady was that unpoetical one which old ladies call “wind in the stomach” when babies have it. He was burning with curiosity to see the magnificent craft of which he had become the owner, and of which he had not seen even the outside till he left the sandbank.

“No, Mr. Belgrave; you must not go on deck yet. You must keep quiet for a little while at least, until you are sure you are quite well,” said the stewardess.

“I am sure of it now, Mrs. Blossom. I am not a baby.”

“But you have wind on the stomach all the same,” laughed she. “But here comes the captain, and you must mind him till you are perfectly well.”

Louis assured the commander that he was quite well; he had eaten plenty of the soup, and he felt like a new man. He wanted to see the steamer. What was the use of being a millionaire, and owning a steam-yacht of six hundred tons, if he could not see her?

“You may look the cabins over first; and then if you are all right, I will take you on deck, and introduce the officers to you,” replied Captain Ringgold, after taking a careful survey of his young friend. “We are now in the main cabin, and it is sometimes called the state cabin. It is the apartment of the owner. It has four staterooms on each side, two of which have bathrooms attached to them, so that the owner can be as comfortable as at the finest hotel in the city of New York. This cabin is nearly in the centre of the ship, where the motion is the least perceptible.”

Louis looked into all the staterooms. The two forward ones on each side were very large, and were as elegantly fitted up as the cabin itself. At the after end of the cabin there was a broad staircase leading to the social hall on deck. At the stern of the vessel was another cabin, fitted up handsomely, and having a stateroom and four berths on each side, but for which there seemed to be no use at present.

“How do you feel, Mr. Belgrave?” asked the captain, after he had shown the state cabin to his owner.

“Very well indeed, sir,” replied Louis. “But why do you call me Mr. Belgrave? You have never been in the habit of mistering me.”

“Sparks!” called the captain to the cabin steward. “Go on deck, and ask Mr. Boulong to call as many of the officers as can be spared from their duties to the quarter-deck.”

“I may call you Louis when we are alone, but everybody on board must call the owner Mr. Belgrave; for it would be highly improper for any officer or seaman to address him by his first name, or to leave off the handle to the last one,” the captain explained.

“Well, I suppose I can stand it if you and the officers can,” replied Louis, who felt well enough to laugh by this time.

“I have served my time in the navy, though I was a young man then; but on board ship a certain amount of ceremony is necessary. Even on board merchantmen the mates are called mister.”

They commenced the ascent of the grand staircase together.