Jimmy sat down, and, much as he desired it, could think of nothing apposite to say. He felt that there are occasions on which one should speak clearly, but, as not infrequently happens, it was just then that he was usually dumb. Perhaps Tom Wheelock understood this, for once more he smiled as he looked at him.
"I wouldn't worry about it, Jimmy," he said.
Jimmy was still tongue-tied, but one result of his father's observations was that fierce anger commenced to mingle with his distress, and he felt his nature stir in protest. Merril would take the _Tyee_--that could not be helped--but it seemed an insufferable thing that for the paltry value of the schooner he should have crushed this frail and broken man. Jimmy clenched a firm brown hand, and felt his fingers itch for a grip on the bondholder's throat.
There was silence for a while, intensified by the soft splash of ripples against the _Tyee_'s planking, and Jimmy afterward remembered how his father's worn face showed up in the stream of light that shone down through the skylights into the shadowy cabin. He lay wrapped in old and dirty blankets, a worn-out and broken man who stood in the way of one who was stronger. He held an unlighted pipe in his limp and nerveless hand, and the cabin reeked with unsavory odors. It was unclean and wholly comfortless, and it seemed to Jimmy, who was fresh from the luxury of the mail-boats, almost horrible that the man to whom he owed his being should lie there in sordid misery. At last he straightened himself resolutely.
"There are several points to consider," he said. "The schooner will be sold--that's certain--and I must find a room for you ashore. It's fortunate that one difficulty can be got over. Men who can work seem to be in demand here just now, and when Merril sells the _Tyee_ there ought to be a few dollars over."
"There might be if we had anybody to bid against him and run the figure up, but we haven't. Anyway, Bob and I have been talking things over this morning. He has had 'most enough of the sea, and one of the C.P.R. men will put him on a soft thing on the wharf. Well, we're going to take one of the little frame-houses just back of the town between us. Not quite a mansion, Jimmy, but there are four rooms in it."