To Captain Briggs quite other thoughts were coming. Not now could the lure of his well-loved ocean appeal to him, for all the wonders of the umber and dull orange west. Where but an hour ago beauty had spread its miracles across the world, for him, now all had turned to drab. A few faint twinkles of light were beginning to show in fishers’ cottages; and these, too, saddened the old captain, for they minded him of Snug Haven’s waiting lights—Snug Haven, where he had hoped so wonderfully much, but where now only mournful disillusion and bodings of evil remained.
The ceaseless threnody of the sea seemed to the old man a requiem over dead hopes. The salt tides seemed to mock and gibe at him, and out of the pale haze drifting seaward from the slow-heaving waters, ghosts seemed beckoning.
All at once Hal spoke, his college slang rudely jarring the old captain’s melancholy.
“That was some jolt I handed Mac, wasn’t it?” he laughed. “He’ll be more careful who he picks on next time. That’s about what he needed, a good walloping.”
“Eh? What?” murmured the old man, roused from sad musings.
“Such people have to get it handed to them once in a while,” the grandson continued. “There’s only one kind of argument they understand—and that’s this!”
He raised his right fist, inspected it, turning it this way and that, admiring its massive power, its adamantine bone and sinew.
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Hal, don’t do that!” exclaimed the captain. With strange eyes he peered at the young man.
“Some fist, what?” he boasted. “Some pacifier!”
As he turned toward the old man, his breath smote the captain’s senses.
“Lord, Hal! You haven’t been drinking, have you?” quavered Briggs.
“Drinking? Well—no. Maybe I’ve had one or two, but that’s all.”
“What’s the matter, now? What’s the harm in a drop of good stimulant? I asked him for a drink, and he couldn’t see it, the tightwad! I took it, anyhow. That’s what started all the rough-house.”
“Great heavens, Hal! D’you mean to tell me you’re drinking, now?”
“There, there, gramp, don’t get all stewed up. All the fellows take a drop now and then. You don’t want me to be a molly-coddle, do you? To feel I can’t take a nip, once in a while, and hold it like a gentleman? That’s all foolishness, grampy. Be sensible!”