“I will just as soon as I can turn my hand to something else.”

“But why not now?”

Now is the accepted time was ringing in Joe’s ears, and if the other wished to leave, it seemed a pity that he did not, and at once.

“Where can I go?  What can I do?  There ’s nobody in all the world to lend me a hand, just as there never has been.  I tried it once, and learned my lesson too well to do it again in a hurry.”

“Well, when I get out of this I ’m going home.  Guess my father was right, after all.  And I don’t see, maybe—­what ’s the matter with you going with me?” He said this last without thinking, impulsively, and ’Frisco Kid knew it.

“You don’t know what you ’re talking about,” he answered.  “Fancy me going off with you!  What ’d your father say? and—­and the rest?  How would he think of me?  And what ’d he do?”

Joe felt sick at heart.  He realized that in the spirit of the moment he had given an invitation which, on sober thought, he knew would be impossible to carry out.  He tried to imagine his father receiving in his own house a stranger like ’Frisco Kid—­no, that was not to be thought of.  Then, forgetting his own plight, he fell to racking his brains for some other method by which ’Frisco Kid could get away from his present surroundings.

“He might turn me over to the police,” the other went on, “and send me to a refuge.  I ’d die first, before I ’d let that happen to me.  And besides, Joe, I ’m not of your kind, and you know it.  Why, I ’d be like a fish out of water, what with all the things I did n’t know.  Nope; I guess I ’ll have to wait a little before I strike out.  But there ’s only one thing for you to do, and that ’s to go straight home.  First chance I get I ’ll land you, and then I ’ll deal with French Pete—­”

“No, you don’t,” Joe interrupted hotly.  “When I leave I ’m not going to leave you in trouble on my account.  So don’t you try anything like that.  I ’ll get away, never fear, and if I can figure it out I want you to come along too; come along anyway, and figure it out afterward.  What d’ you say?”

’Frisco Kid shook his head, and, gazing up at the starlit heavens, wandered off into dreams of the life he would like to lead but from which he seemed inexorably shut out.  The seriousness of life was striking deeper than ever into Joe’s heart, and he lay silent, thinking hard.  A mumble of heavy voices came to them from the Reindeer; and from the land the solemn notes of a church bell floated across the water, while the summer night wrapped them slowly in its warm darkness.

CHAPTER XIV

AMONG THE OYSTER-BEDS

Time and the world slipped away, and both boys were aroused by the harsh voice of French Pete from the sleep into which they had fallen.

“Get under way!” he was bawling.  “Here, you Sho!  Cast off ze gaskets!  Queeck!  Lively!  You Kid, ze jib!”