A LETTER FROM THE STATE DEPARTMENT.
“I think it’s a mean way to treat a fellow, Kit,” Harry Leonard
complained when they were alone together. “Oh, you needn’t think I’m
going to be calling you Mr. Silburn when nobody else can hear. I want
a chance to see something of London, and you know very well it’s only
fair I should have. I haven’t been allowed ashore since we came into
the Thames. You always used to go ashore when you were cabin boy, for
you’ve told me so.”
“That was a little different,” Kit exclaimed. “I was doing a
supercargo’s work when I was cabin boy, and I had to go ashore on
business. But I think the Captain will let you go up to town if you ask
him. I know he likes you, from the way he speaks of you. You’re a very
different boy, Harry, if you don’t mind my saying so, from what you
were when you came on board. We all have to learn, I suppose, that we
don’t get things for favors, but by working for them, and you are doing
your work well.”
“Thawnk you very much, Mr. Supercargo!” Harry retorted, taking off his
cap in mock humility. “I like to be appreciated by my superiors.”
“Well, it’s a fact,” Kit laughed. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. All this
stuff on the wharf will be aboard by two or three o’clock, and if you
like I will ask the Captain to let you go up to London with me after
that. You know it is daylight here till eight or nine o’clock in the
evening.”
“Hooray for you!” Harry shouted. “If you ask, it’s a sure thing, for
you get whatever you want. I wish I had such a pull with the Captain as
you have.”
“I have no ‘pull’ at all--” Kit started to say; but he was interrupted
by footsteps on the companionway, and a moment later Captain Griffith
entered the cabin with a handful of letters.
“There seems to be something for most everybody in this lot,” he said,
laying the letters upon the big table and looking them over. “Captain
Griffith, Captain Griffith, Mr. Mason, Mr. Christopher Silburn, Mr.
Hanway, Mr. Christopher Silburn--here are two for you, Silburn, so your
folks have not forgotten you.”
Kit saw at a glance that one of the letters was from his mother and the
other from Vieve; and the one from his mother was so large and thick
that it rather alarmed him. He went to the corner of the long sofa and
hurriedly opened it, and found two enclosures, besides a page or two in
his mother’s handwriting.
“We are so flustered by these letters that we don’t know what to do,”
Mrs. Silburn wrote. “But your sister and I both think that the best
thing will be to send them right over to you, so that you will be sure
to get them before you leave London. We have kept copies, in case they
should be lost. Oh, Kit, do you think there is any chance that this man
may be your dear father? I am afraid it is only exciting our hopes in
vain, but we ought to do something about it, though we don’t know what.
How could we ever get along without a great, big _man_ like our
Kit to advise us?”
After reading this mysterious introduction Kit turned hurriedly to
the enclosures. The first was on a sheet headed “Bryant & Williams,
Bridgeport, Conn.,” whom he immediately recognized as the owners of his
father’s schooner, the _Flower City_.
MRS. CHRISTOPHER SILBURN, Huntington, Conn. [the letter began]:
Please find enclosed a copy of a letter we have just received from
the State Department at Washington, which explains itself. We have
sent similar copies to the families of all the members of the crew
of the schooner _Flower City_, as far as they are known. While
we have slight hopes that the person referred to in the letter
may have been a member of that unfortunate crew, we deem it only
right to lay the information before you, that you may take whatever
measures seem to you proper.
Very respectfully yours,
BRYANT & WILLIAMS.
Kit was beginning by this time to chafe over the delay in getting at
the mysterious information. But the other enclosure must give it, and
he quickly unfolded the sheet.
STATE DEPARTMENT, Washington, D. C. [it began].
OFFICE OF THE FOURTH ASSISTANT SECRETARY.
Folio G x R. No. 2814 F.
MESSRS. BRYANT & WILLIAMS, Bridgeport, Conn.
_Dear Sirs_: The department is informed by the Consulate at
Wellington, New Zealand, that a patient who has been in the public
hospital there for some months is supposed to be a shipwrecked
American sailor. This man was landed in Wellington from the
British ship, _Prince Albert_, having been picked up by that
ship on the 27th of June last on a small unnamed island in the
Pacific Ocean, where his three companions had died of hardship and
starvation, and where he was reduced to such a mental and physical
condition that he was unable to move or give any account of himself.
Since his reception in the hospital he has been restored to
physical health, but he is still unable to give his name or place
of residence, though from certain tests that have been applied it
is believed that he is a native-born American citizen. He is of
medium height with gray hair and beard, and looks sixty years old,
though he is probably much younger.
The Life Saving Service has supplied this department with a list of
all the American vessels that have been lost within the last two
years; and a copy of this letter is sent to the owners of each of
such lost vessels, as far as they can be traced, to enable them to
communicate with the families of the lost crews.
Requests for information on the subject should be addressed to the
Chairman of the Board of Governors, Public Hospital, Wellington,
New Zealand; or to the American Consulate at that port.
Yours, etc.,
H. R. BATTAWAY,
_Chief Clerk to Fourth Assistant Secretary_.
On opening the letter from Vieve he found that it was full of questions
and surmises about the mysterious man in New Zealand, so he put that
in his pocket to be read later on. The State Department letter was
too important to let anything interfere with it. He read it again and
again, and tried to estimate what the chances were that this man might
be his missing father. Suppose there were twenty lost vessels, each
with a crew of twenty men? That would give only one chance in four
hundred. But one chance in forty thousand, he thought, would be a great
thing. Sixty years old? His father was not nearly as old as that; and
there was not a gray hair in his head. But who could say what suffering
he might have gone through, or what changes it might have made in his
appearance?
It was hard work to put those letters into his pocket and go on quietly
checking his lists as the cargo came aboard; but it was necessary, and
Kit did it. The engagement he had just made with Harry Leonard must be
postponed, for he must have time to think, and then time to write some
letters. But what was he to write?
All through the morning and until the last case of cargo on the wharf
was put in the hold and duly checked off, the young supercargo stuck
manfully to his work. Harry Leonard was disappointed when told that his
trip to London would have to be put off, but when Kit explained the
reason Harry was more than willing to wait.
“Why, they’d give him a big reception in Huntington,” he exclaimed, “if
your father should come home alive.”
With all his thinking Kit could not decide upon a better course than to
show the letters to Captain Griffith and ask his advice. “He knows more
in five minutes than I know in a week,” he said to himself, “and his
advice is sure to be good. It’s a valuable thing to have good friends
to go to when you need advice.”
Captain Griffith, as he expected, was very much interested when he
heard the contents of Kit’s letter. First he listened while Kit read
the letter from the State Department, and then took it and read it
carefully over himself. Then he got out a map to look at the position
of Wellington, New Zealand.
For some minutes he leaned back in his revolving-chair, looking hard at
the ceiling, deep in thought.
“It’s a strange case, Silburn,” he said at length. “I’ve been trying to
figure out what happened to your father when his schooner went down.
They took to the boats, and in the heavy sea your father’s boat went to
pieces. He kept afloat on some piece of wreckage, and in the morning
he was seen and picked up by a passing ship. She was an American ship,
I should say, bound ’round the Horn for San Francisco or the northwest
coast. But when they got into the Pacific that second ship was wrecked,
and your father and three others made their way to a little island,
where he was afterwards picked up by the British vessel and carried to
New Zealand. Yes, it is all plain enough.”
“Why, Captain!” Kit cried; “do you really think so, sir?”
“I don’t say that I think so, or that I don’t think so,” the Captain
answered. “I wanted to see whether there was any reasonable theory
by which I could account for your father’s being found on a desolate
little island in the Pacific. I see that there is; it might easily have
happened just as I have described it. So we begin by knowing that it
is possible that this man may be your father. And having reached that
point we came to a sudden stop through somebody’s remarkable stupidity.
Do you see how badly this inquiry has been managed?”
“Yes, sir,” Kit answered, “I think I do. They ought to have sent a
photograph of the man and a full description.”
“Of course they ought!” the Captain declared, thumping his fist down on
the desk. “The fullest description possible--his height, weight, color
of his eyes, condition of his teeth, marks on his body, every possible
particular. I suppose we must be satisfied that the State Department
has taken the trouble to give even this much information about the
case; but it would have been easy to give a little more. However, this
oversight does not put an end to the business; it only entails a great
waste of time. Now you have been thinking about this thing all day;
what has it occurred to you ought to be done?”
“Well, sir,” Kit answered, “it seemed to me that the best way would be
to write to the American consul at Wellington, and ask him to send a
description of the man. If it is my father, he is nothing like sixty
years old, but what he has gone through may make him look much older
than he really is.”
“That’s it,” the Captain agreed. “That is exactly the proper thing for
you to do. And write from here, at once; but have the answer sent to
your home in America, for there is no telling where you may be. Now
tell me something about your father. How tall a man was he?”
“He was just five feet ten and a half inches, sir,” Kit replied. “I
remember that very well, because he used to measure me when I was
little and say, ‘I wonder whether you will ever be as tall as your
father, youngster?’ It hardly looked likely then, but I am within about
an inch of that now, and still growing.”
“Very well; put that down on this slip of paper; height, five feet ten
and a half inches. Was he stout, or slender?”
“Just about medium, sir,” Kit went on; “I think he weighed about one
hundred and sixty pounds. And he was dark in the hands and face, from
the sun, and had dark brown eyes and hair to match, the hair just a
little bit curly, like mine.”
“Put it all down,” the Captain said. “Were his teeth good or bad?”
“Oh, he had beautiful teeth, sir,” Kit declared. “He never had to go
to the dentist’s, and they were as white and regular--well, I used to
tell him they were almost as handsome as a set of false ones.”
“Put it down,” the Captain repeated. “And do you know whether there
were any marks on his body that he could be identified by?”
“The only mark I know of was a long scar on his left temple, sir,” Kit
answered, “running down like this;” and he drew a finger across his own
temple to show the direction. “He got that when he had such a narrow
escape from being killed. A block fell from aloft and came just near
enough to make a gash in his skin. A quarter of an inch more would have
killed him on the spot, of course; but he only laughed at it when he
told us about it.”
“Ah, that is a good point; put it down. A man may lose his teeth, or
grow fat or thin, or his hair turn gray, but he never can get rid of a
scar. That cut on the temple will go further than anything else to tell
us whether this is your father or not. Now when you write to the consul
tell him all these things that you have told me, and as much more as
you can think of. And there is another thing. To make such an inquiry
as this, and get your father home, if it proves to be your father, will
cost some money. You are willing to spend whatever you can afford, I
suppose?”
“Why, Captain,” Kit exclaimed, “what would I care for money in exchange
for my father! I would sell the last shirt off my back just to hear
that he is alive. And we could raise a little money in Huntington, if
it came to the worst. I know mother would spend her last cent to find
him. But I think I can manage it myself, if it does not cost too much.”
“Well, Silburn,” the Captain said, laying his hand on Kit’s shoulder,
“you have a good name, and that is always something to fall back on. I
have a little money that I have saved year after year, and if you need
more than you think, I will lend you a few hundred, and you can pay me
interest on it and pay it off gradually. I should consider it quite as
safe in your hands as if it remained in the bank.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Kit answered. “I am more grateful to you than I
can tell you. But it will be months before we can hear from the consul,
and by that time I shall have a little more money of my own. I want to
send him a little money in the letter and ask him to have a photograph
taken of the man in the hospital. If it is my father, I think we should
recognize him, no matter how much he is changed.”
“That is a capital idea,” the Captain assented; “and by writing from
here your letter will get to New Zealand much sooner than if you sent
it from America.”
That evening Kit had his hands full with letter-writing. There was one
to be written to his mother, and one to Vieve, and a note to Bryant &
Williams, thanking them for their letter, and last of all, a long one
to the consul at Wellington, in which he gave the fullest possible
description of his father.
“The mention of some familiar names,” he wrote, “might cause him to
remember things that he has forgotten, if, as I hope, it proves to be
my father. He lives in Huntington, Connecticut, opposite the church,
and my mother’s name is Emily Silburn. His two children are Genevieve
and Christopher Silburn; he always called us Vieve and Kit. Our dog’s
name is Turk. The _Flower City_ was the schooner he was wrecked
on. The scar I have mentioned looks whiter than the rest of his face.
If he seems to recognize any of these names, that will be pretty good
evidence that he is Christopher Silburn.”
“Ah, my!” Kit said to himself, rubbing his eyes after finishing the
long letter, “this not knowing whether you have a father or not is bad
business. But just suppose we should see him sitting again in his old
chair in Huntington! I mustn’t think of that, though, for it may be
only preparing for a disappointment.”
Captain Griffith approved of the letter to the consul when he read it;
and when Kit asked permission for Harry Leonard to go up to London with
him next day, it was given immediately.
“I don’t like to have my boys going into these big towns alone,
getting into mischief,” he said; “but if Harry goes with you, that
is a different matter. You know you are not a boy any more, but a
supercargo; and you must keep Harry straight. By the way, Silburn,
stand out there in the light a minute till I look at you. There; that
is just the way I stood you out the night I rescued you from the
policeman in Brooklyn. Do you know it occurred to me while you were
describing your father this afternoon that you were giving almost an
exact description of yourself? You must be very much like him.”
“I am glad to hear it, sir,” Kit laughed, “for he was always called a
fine-looking man.”
When the Captain’s two “boys” took the ferryboat over to Tilbury in the
morning, Harry was like a young colt in a spring pasture. No wonder,
either, for he had not set foot off the _North Cape’s_ deck before
since she left New York. He was full of fun now that he was away from
the restraint of the ship, and, like Kit, he was not disposed to admire
everything simply because it was in a foreign country; on the contrary,
most things he saw he regarded as fair game for ridicule.
“And they call these things cars, do they?” he asked, when they were
seated alone in one of the compartments of the train. “Well, they look
to me very much like our coal cars in America, with roofs put on them.
I suppose they have such little windows because larger ones would be
of no use; you never can see more than fifty yards in this country,
on account of the fog. Did you ever see such a foggy hole? I know now
why the sun never sets on the Queen’s dominions: it’s because it never
rises, ‘don-cher-know?’ What do they want with an old Queen here,
anyhow? I guess if a President’s good enough for us, it’s good enough
for them.”
“I always thought you were an Irishman, Harry,” Kit laughed; “now I’m
sure of it, from the way you find fault with the English. Wait till you
see London; you may change your mind then.”
“Oh, London!” Harry sneered. “You’d think the sun rose out of the
Thames and set in Buckingham Palace, to hear these Britishers talk.
I’ll bet it’s not as fine a city as Bridgeport. Look at the big
factories they have there, and the new court-house, and the--”
“We may as well get out here,” Kit interrupted, “as this is Fenchurch
Street station and the end of the line. I don’t believe they’ll carry
us any further.” He found it very entertaining and novel to act as
a guide to London, particularly with a companion who looked upon
everything from such original standpoints as Harry, and who was so
determined to see nothing equal to America in the British capital.
Harry was so much interested in Kit’s accounts of the mummies and other
curiosities in the British Museum, that they took a hansom and drove to
the Museum first.
“This sort of thing will do occasionally in London,” Kit said, “where a
cab costs a shilling. But we’ll have to come down to street cars again,
or walking, when we get back to America.”
“Where are the high buildings, Kit?” Harry asked, after they had gone
a few blocks. “These are all small affairs, so far. Can’t we have him
drive past some of the tall buildings?”
“I’m afraid we should have hard work to find any,” Kit answered. “I
have seen no buildings here more than six or eight stories high.”
“Six or eight stories!” Harry cried; “and they call this a great city!
Why, there are some buildings in New York twenty-six stories high, and
lots of them from twenty to twenty-five stories. Yes, it’s just as I
expected: they brag so much about London, but I don’t believe it’s
‘in it’ at all beside America. They can’t fool me with their mummies,
either, for I saw some in a museum in New York when I was there. I know
a thing or two about dried Egyptians.”
As he was prepared to find fault with the mummies, it was not hard to
be disappointed in them. “They’re a very ordinary lot,” he declared
when he saw them. “Those in New York were all kings and emperors and
such things, but these are just common people. They don’t look as
life-like, either. Why, those fellows in New York seemed just ready to
sit up and eat their dinner.”
Some mention being made of Buckingham Palace, Harry immediately
became anxious to see it. “Not that I suppose it amounts to much,” he
explained, “but we may as well see what sort of tenement houses they
lodge their royal family in. Royal family, indeed! Why, in our country
we’d elect a new queen every year or two if we had to have one at all.”
“Very well,” Kit assented; “I should rather like to see Buckingham
Palace, too, and we can have a look at the Thames Embankment at the
same time. We can walk over to Gower Street station and take the
underground road to St. James Park station, and that is near the
Palace. We both want to see the great underground railway, of course.”
Feeling surer of making his way in the main streets, Kit led Harry to
Tottenham Court Road, and turned up Euston Road to the Gower Street
station. In Euston Road they found a great many openings in the
street and in the yards on each side, through which poured clouds of
sulphurous smoke.
“Bah!” Harry cried, as one of the dirty clouds enveloped and half
choked them; “there must be a sulphur mine underneath here, and it’s
caught fire. Or do you suppose it’s a match factory?”
“I suppose these must be airholes for the underground road,” Kit
replied; “for it runs under this street. But I don’t see how the people
can stand such rank smoke, that’s a fact. And it’s cheerful to think
that that’s the air we will have to breathe in the underground train.”
They bought their tickets for St. James Park station and went down
two long and dirty stairways into the bowels of the earth, where they
found a long cave arched with smoky bricks, dimly lighted with a
half-dozen gas-jets, with a very dirty platform on each side and two
tracks between them. Twenty or thirty other persons were waiting for
the train, all breathing the thick smoky atmosphere, that coated their
throats and made them cough.
In two or three minutes a faint rumbling began in one of the dark
tunnels leading out of each end of the cave; and the rumbling grew
louder and louder till it became a roar, and the train drew up. There
was a great banging of doors, people got out and others got in, Kit and
Harry scrambled into an empty compartment, and in a few seconds the
lights of the platform faded away and they were in darkness save for a
very dim gas-jet in the roof of the car.
“Now this is real luxury!” Harry laughed. “Everything you touch is
black as a chimney, and the air you breathe is thick enough to cut.
These tunnels would make good sewers, Kit. But do you think our folks
would believe the Londoners really ride through such holes in the
ground? Ain’t it simply frightful?”
“I shall have to agree with you this time,” Kit answered. “I had no
idea the underground roads were as bad as this. It would be a terrible
place for an accident, wouldn’t it, in these dark caves?”
They went on and on past station after station, and after half an hour
of jolting and half suffocating Kit began to suspect that he must have
made some mistake, for it was less than a mile from Gower Street to St.
James Park. He took out his map and examined it as well as he could
under the feeble light.
“See here, I’ll tell you what we’ve done,” he explained, “we’ve taken
an outer circle train. You know this underground road runs in a small
inner circle and a big outer circle. And we’re in the wrong train,
that is carrying us away round the city. But no matter, it will bring
us to St. James after a while. That’s rather a good joke on us, Harry,
for a hansom would have taken us across in half the time and for half
the money.”
“Oh, well,” Harry answered, “no matter. It’s just as well to get a good
dose of the underground this time, for I never want to see the thing
again. One dose is enough, well shaken and taken.”
It took them fifty minutes to reach the St. James Park station; and
after they had climbed the long stairs to the surface they stood awhile
on the edge of the park to get some fresh air into their lungs.
“It’s just as I expected,” Harry declared, “only a good deal worse.
They don’t half know how to do things over here. And that’s Buckingham
Palace, is it, where the Queen lives? Why, it’s only two stories high,
and a basement! Now, Kit, you know as well as I do that this palace
ain’t a patch to Mr. Barnum’s house out in Seaside Park, in Bridgeport.
No, sir, it doesn’t compare with it.”
“Oh, Harry, you can’t please a fellow who’s determined not to be
pleased,” Kit laughed. “When you come to London, you must make up your
mind that things are better than anywhere else, and tell the people
so. Then they’ll pat you on the back and say the Americans are their
cousins.”
“How could I tell them?” Harry asked; “they don’t understand me when
I speak to them, and I never half know what they say. I should think
they might know how to speak their own language.”
By the time night came they had seen the new Thames Embankment, and
Madame Tussaud’s waxworks show, Trafalgar Square, and Pall Mall, St.
Paul’s Cathedral, and several of the curious old churches, and had
walked through the Strand and Fleet Street, and many more of the busy
parts of the city. And within forty-eight hours the Scilly signals were
set in motion again, and over the wires flashed the brief announcement,
“Passed, steamer _North Cape_, for New York.”