“’Twasn’t a calm,” said Harvey, sulkily.  “It was a gale, and I was seasick.  Guess I must have rolled over the rail.”

“There was a little common swell yes’day an’ last night,” said the boy.  “But ef thet’s your notion of a gale——­” He whistled.  “You’ll know more ’fore you’re through.  Hurry!  Dad’s waitin’.”

Like many other unfortunate young people, Harvey had never in all his life received a direct order—­never, at least, without long, and sometimes tearful, explanations of the advantages of obedience and the reasons for the request.  Mrs. Cheyne lived in fear of breaking his spirit, which, perhaps, was the reason that she herself walked on the edge of nervous prostration.  He could not see why he should be expected to hurry for any man’s pleasure, and said so.  “Your dad can come down here if he’s so anxious to talk to me.  I want him to take me to New York right away.  It’ll pay him.”

Dan opened his eyes as the size and beauty of this joke dawned on him.  “Say, Dad!” he shouted up the foc’sle hatch, “he says you kin slip down an’ see him ef you’re anxious that way.  ’Hear, Dad?”

The answer came back in the deepest voice Harvey had ever heard from a human chest:  “Quit foolin’, Dan, and send him to me.”

Dan sniggered, and threw Harvey his warped bicycle shoes.  There was something in the tones on the deck that made the boy dissemble his extreme rage and console himself with the thought of gradually unfolding the tale of his own and his father’s wealth on the voyage home.  This rescue would certainly make him a hero among his friends for life.  He hoisted himself on deck up a perpendicular ladder, and stumbled aft, over a score of obstructions, to where a small, thick-set, clean-shaven man with gray eyebrows sat on a step that led up to the quarter-deck.  The swell had passed in the night, leaving a long, oily sea, dotted round the horizon with the sails of a dozen fishing-boats.  Between them lay little black specks, showing where the dories were out fishing.  The schooner, with a triangular riding-sail on the mainmast, played easily at anchor, and except for the man by the cabin-roof —­“house” they call it—­she was deserted.

“Mornin’—­Good afternoon, I should say.  You’ve nigh slep’ the clock round, young feller,” was the greeting.

“Mornin’,” said Harvey.  He did not like being called “young feller”; and, as one rescued from drowning, expected sympathy.  His mother suffered agonies whenever he got his feet wet; but this mariner did not seem excited.

“Naow let’s hear all abaout it.  It’s quite providential, first an’ last, fer all concerned.  What might be your name?  Where from (we mistrust it’s Noo York), an’ where baound (we mistrust it’s Europe)?”

Harvey gave his name, the name of the steamer, and a short history of the accident, winding up with a demand to be taken back immediately to New York, where his father would pay anything any one chose to name.