Jimmy set his lips, and once more there was silence for a while. Then he looked up with a little abrupt movement. "There's a question in front of us to be faced--and I'm going to find the answer; but we won't talk any more about it now. I'm going over with Jordan this afternoon to see Eleanor. You can get along until to-night without me?"
Wheelock made a sign of concurrence. "I guess it's a thing you ought to do. Got a letter from her yesterday, and she was asking about you. Eleanor's like you. Take after your mother, both of you, and, if anything, the harder grit's in her. You have to remember, Jimmy, you can't afford to show a soft spot when you're fighting a man like Merril."
He stopped a moment, with a sigh. "Guess he is too hard for your father. Won't you light me this pipe again? My hand's shaky."
Jordan was driving a spirited team along the water-front when Jimmy came up from the wharf, and he smiled when the latter swung himself up into the light, four-wheeled vehicle. Jimmy was dressed tastefully in his English shore-going clothes, and now looked very much unlike a yacht-hand. He was well endued physically, and, though the bronze in his face and a certain steadiness of gaze betrayed his calling, there was an indefinite but unmistakable stamp upon him which he had acquired on board the big mail-boats, and perhaps also in a greater measure from his comrades on the battleship. Jimmy had certainly not cultivated it, and was, in fact, not aware that he possessed it, but his companion had already recognized it.
"Take a cigar, and light it before I let the team out. They look as if they could go," he said.
Jimmy did so, and then found it somewhat difficult to keep his seat as his comrade sent the horses through the city as fast as they could lay hoof to the ground, and out of it past the clustering wooden hovels in its less reputable quarter, and up the slope that led into the shadowy bush. Roads are not remarkable for their smoothness anywhere in that country, but it was evident that Jordan liked fast traveling and could handle a team. He laughed when Jimmy said so.
"I come of farmer stock, and that's probably why I always had a notion of the sea," he said. "If you look at it in one way, the thing's quite natural."