Kit crossed the floor and put his hand on his father’s arm.  “Thanks; I think I know what this means to you.  It will cost me something; but I must go.”

He went out and Peter sat still, looking gloomily at the fire.  He felt old and knew he would be very lonely soon.  The fire burned low and the kitchen got cold, but Kit did not come back and when Peter heard his housekeeper’s clogs on the stones outside he got up and crossed the floor, to get his hat.  Old Bella was curious and he did not want to talk, but there was something to be done in the barn and when his heart was sore it was a relief to work.

PART II—­ON THE CARIBBEAN

CHAPTER I

THE OLD BUCCANEER

It was about four o’clock in the afternoon and Kit Askew lounged in a chair on the bridge-deck as the Rio Negro steamed slowly across the long swell of the Caribbean.  The wrinkled undulations sparkled with reflected light in a dazzling pattern of blue and silver, and then faded to green and purple in the shadow of the ship.  A wave of snowy foam curled up as the bows went down and the throb of the propeller quickened as the poop swung against the sky.  Then the lurching hull steadied and the clang of engines resumed its measured beat.

The Rio Negro was old and ugly, with short iron masts from which clumsy derricks hung, tall, upright funnel, and blistered, gray paint.  Her boats were dirty and stained by soot, and a belt of rust at her waterline hinted at neglect, but no barnacles and weed marred the smoothness of the plates below.  Her antifouling paint was clean, and her lines beneath the swell of quarter and bows were fine.  In fact, the Rio Negro was faster than she looked when she carried her regular load of two thousand tons and her under-water body was hidden.  She traded in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, and at certain ports Customs officials carefully scrutinized her papers.  At others, they smiled and allowed her captain privileges that strangers did not get.

Kit wore spotless white clothes, a black-silk belt, and a Panama hat of the expensive kind the Indians weave, holding the fine material under water.  A glass occupied a socket in his chair, and when the Rio Negro rolled a lump of ice tinkled against its rim; a box of choice cigars lay on the deck.  Kit, however, was not smoking, but drowsily pondered the life he had led for the last three years.  He was thinner and looked older than when he left Ashness.  He had lost something of his frankness and his raw enthusiasm had gone.  His face was quieter and his mouth set in a firm line.