his chair again. "No," he said quietly, "if it wasn't for my son, and
what's due him as my heir, I suppose--I reckon I'd just chuck the whole
d----d thing."
"What!" said Randolph. "Give up the property, the title, the family
honor, the wrong done to your reputation, the punishment"--He hesitated,
fearing he had gone too far.
Captain Dornton withdrew his pipe from his mouth with a gesture of
caution, and holding it up, said: "Steady, lad. We'll come to THAT by
and by. As to the property and title, I cut and run from THEM ten
years ago. To me they meant only the old thing--the life of a country
gentleman, the hunting, the shooting, the whole beastly business that
the land, over there, hangs like a millstone round your neck. They meant
all this to me, who loved adventure and the sea from my cradle. I cut
the property, for I hated it, and I hate it still. If I went back I
should hear the sea calling me day and night; I should feel the breath
of the southwest trades in every wind that blew over that tight little
island yonder; I should be always scenting the old trail, lad, the trail
that leads straight out of the Gate to swoop down to the South Seas. Do
you think a man who has felt his ship's bows heave and plunge under him
in the long Pacific swell--just ahead of him a reef breaking white into
the lagoon, and beyond a fence of feathery palms--cares to follow hounds
over gray hedges under a gray November sky? And the society? A man who's
got a speaking acquaintance in every port from Acapulco to Melbourne,
who knows every den and every longshoreman in it from a South American
tienda to a Samoan beach-comber's hut,--what does he want with society?"
He paused as Randolph's eyes were fixed wonderingly on the first sign
of emotion on his weather-beaten face, which seemed for a moment to glow
with the strength and freshness of the sea, and then said, with a laugh:
"You stare, lad. Well, for all the Dorntons are rather proud of their
family, like as not there was some beastly old Danish pirate among them
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