Donald rushed into the house to find visitors in the front parlor with his mother. He peered through the curtain and saw her seated on a lounge, deathly pale, and twisting a sodden handkerchief in her fingers. By her red-rimmed, swollen eyes, Donald knew she had been crying. The visitors were Captain McGillivray, the Sutton Line Marine Superintendent, and a burly man in uniform whom Donald recognized as Mr. McLeish, Chief Officer of the Sarmania. Both men rose to their feet as Donald slipped in and ran to his mother’s side. Clasped in her arms and crying silently, he listened to Mr. McLeish’s story—told with all technical embellishments through nervousness and an effort to keep from tears. Poor, honest, simple-hearted McLeish! It was a hard task they gave him!

“Ye see, Mistress McKenzie,” he proceeded huskily, “we left Sandy Hook on the morn o’ the sixth o’ December an’ ran intae a succession o’ heavy easterly gales. We made twenty west four days ago, when it sterted in tae blow worse’n ever frae the east’ard and an awful sea made up. Th’ Captain didny dare steam her in th’ face o’ sich a wind an’ sea, so he keppit her heid to it and turning over jist enough to give her steerage-way. Yer husband, madam, was a wonderful sailor and he handled that Sarmania beautifully, and mind ye, she’s a shup that needs carefu’ handlin’—bein’ a long, deep shup wi’ no much beam. As I was sayin’, we kep’ her bows-on to it waitin’ for a let-up, and at fower in th’ mornin’ I had jist cam’ doon aff the bridge tae go tae ma room. The Captun, yer husband, was up on the bridge wi’ th’ second mate, Mister Murphy, and a quarter-master in th’ wheel-hoose, when she shipped a nasty sea what carried away a ventilator on the fore-deck. The bos’n and three men were pluggin’ th’ place when the shup fell down in a reg’lar hole, they tell me. Ah was jist in ma room, at th’ time, and I could feel th’ shup slidin’ doon jist as if th’ sea had droppit from under her bottom. Ah rin tae the door o’ the alley-way and looks oot tae see a tremendous comber pilin’ up ahead. It was a terrifyin’ sea, that yin, madam, and I never saw anither like it in a’ ma sea-farin’! Then it must ha’ hit th’ shup, for she staggered somethin’ awfu’ and I couldny hear nought for a meenut or twa but the crashin’ and the roarin’ of it. Ah laid on ma back in the alley-way in water and I thocht th’ Sarmania was done for an’ goin’ to the bottom. Then I pickit masel’ up an’ went oot on deck and I found th’ whole bridge and wheel-house gone, the funnel, hauf o’ the ventilators and a’ th’ boats. She was stripped to bare decks and stanchions, madam, but worst of all, madam, yer husband was gone! Aye, him an’ the second mate, and the quartermaster at the wheel, and th’ bos’n and fower men. Eight gone, madam, and fower sae badly mashed up that I doot if they’ll leeve!” McLeish paused and blew his nose violently. “That’s a’ there is tae tell, madam,” he murmured. “Ah’m awfu’ sorry—awfu’——sorry!” He repeated the words in a daze like a man tired out.

Captain McGillivray arose to his feet. “Mrs. McKenzie,” he said quietly, “we’ll no keep ye from yer sorrow. Ye’ve had a terrible blow, but that’s what comes tae sailors’ wives at times. The Loard giveth and the Loard taketh away. Blessed is the name of the Loard. May He give ye comfort and strength in yer sair affliction!”

“Amen tae that!” murmured McLeish, and the two men took their leave.

Janet was left with nothing. Alec had never taken out insurance of any kind, and both husband and wife had lived up to every cent of income. There were many bills to be paid—caterer’s bills; dressmaker’s bills—useless debts, most of them, and the furniture of Kensington Villa had to be sold to pay them. Aye, Janet was suffering and paying the price of folly, and the double load of sorrow and recrimination was all that she could bear.

The huge tidal wave that swept McKenzie and his men to their graves in the chilly depths of the Atlantic did more than that. It swept the McKenzies from comparative affluence into stark poverty. It also cleared from Janet’s eyes the scales of false pride, and she was not too proud to go down and mourn with poor McGlashan’s widow ere she left Glasgow and her fair-weather friends.

The bos’n’s wife would get along. An older son was out earning a little, and Joak would have to do his bit also. Aye, she would manage. She had a few pounds laid by and wouldn’t starve. Poor Joak was “greeting” when Donald bade him “Good-bye.” “I’ll meet you again some day, Joak,” he said, “and I’ll write you, never fear!”

The management of Sutton’s had sent a cautiously-worded letter of regret, and took the liberty of “enclosing our check for fifty pounds, which no doubt would be useful.” They presumed, with the good salary that Captain McKenzie had enjoyed, that Mrs. McKenzie would have prepared for possible contingencies, and that she would be comfortable.

The fifty pounds represented Janet’s sole capital after all debts had been paid, and with this in her purse and a few boxes and trunks of personal clothing, she and Donald vanished from the ken of the aristocratic denizens of Maxwell Park. The tired-looking, dull-eyed woman in deep mourning who left the suburb that cold January morning, had but little resemblance to the haughty and conceited Jeanette McKenzie of a month before. Janet had commenced to learn a new lesson—a lesson which is oft intoned in cold Scotch kirks, “Beware of sinful pride! The pride of thine heart has deceived thee and though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord!” Aye, better the sight of eyes that see humbly than the blindness of vanity and desire!

Mother and son landed in a sea-port town not fifty miles from Glasgow and Janet rented a small furnished house in a modest street. The neighbors wondered who the “stylish lookin’” newcomers were, yet they evinced no great surprise when a printed placard was hung up in the front window with the legend, “Furnished Lodgings.” Buchan Road gossip sized the matter up in a few words. “Weedah-wumman left sudden-like an’ naethin’ pit by!” Such incidents were common in that locality.

And thus they lived for a space. The mother relapsed to the honest toil of her former days and just “managed” and no more to make ends meet, and Donald earned a few shillings per week as boy in the office of a local ship-yard. Both worked hard and were happy, and life went along uneventfully for two years.

Then came Mrs. McKenzie’s decision. Donald was not getting ahead in the shipyard office. The boy was restless and found it hard to apply himself to ledgers and journals. He had no liking for a clerical life, and he was reaching the age where he did not know what he wanted to do. Mrs. McKenzie had her secret ambition to see her son an architect, but in her present circumstances she couldn’t afford it. There was one source of possible assistance she had never appealed to. She would try it right away.

On a drizzling spring day, the mother, still comely and dressed in black, accompanied by Donald—a bit taller, perhaps, but unchanged in features, and clad in carefully brushed clothes and with a clean white collar on and shining black boots—stopped in front of an office building in Bothwell Street, Glasgow. A brass plate bore the legend they sought—“D. McKenzie & Co., Ship Owners & Ship Brokers.”

Entering a rather gloomy office they waited at a counter until a lanky clerk of undeterminable age unlimbered himself from a high stool and brusquely asked, “What can we do for ye?”

“I want to see Mr. McKenzie, if he is in.”

“He’s in,” grunted the clerk. “Have ye a kerd? And what’s yer business with him?”

“Purely private and personal,” replied Janet, producing a visiting card—relic of better days.

The clerk scanned the name and became obsequious. “Wait a minute, ma’am,” he said, and he took the card into a private room. He seemed to be gone a long time—long enough for Donald to scan his uncle’s office and its contents. There were several pictures of ships on the wall, a few maps, and insurance calendars. Numerous old-fashioned desks and cupboards littered the place, while an old-maidish female clerk sat at a window writing in a large book, and a bent-backed, grey-haired man was copying letters in a press. Everything in the establishment, material and human, seemed to be old and dried-up and mean looking. The windows were grimy, and even the driving spring rain failed to make them clearer. Donald figured that the grime was on the inside.

The boy’s attention was centered on a picture of a large iron barque on the wall in front of him. It was a big ship—heavily sparred—and it was riding along with all sail set over a sea like corrugated iron. Painted on the frame was the legend, “Barque Dunsany, D. McKenzie & Co., Glasgow, Owners.” Donald was studying the painting, when the lanky clerk issued from the sound-proof inner chamber. Addressing Mrs. McKenzie, he said, almost insolently, “Mr. McKenzie cannot see you!”

Janet colored. “Why?” she asked calmly.

“He gave no reasons, ma’am,” said the clerk. “Simply said he didny want to see you on any matter or any excuse.”

The mother went white. Her mission had failed and she was too proud to plead. “Come, Donald,” she said. “We’ll go!”

They had hardly reached the stairs before the clerk caught up to them. “Mr. McKenzie has changed his mind,” he exclaimed. “He will see you if ye’ll come back with me.”

A minute later they were ushered into the private office and stood facing the man—Alec’s brother—who in bitterness and unreasonable pride had kept himself aloof from them for eighteen years.

He was seated before a large table littered with papers and books—a hard-visaged, stiff-mouthed man, pallid-faced and stern-looking. His thin hair straggled over his forehead, unkempt, and he sat back in his chair with his head hunched into his collar, his clean-shaven chin sunk into his chest, and regarded the McKenzies through steel-rimmed spectacles with searching, unfriendly eyes.

There were two chairs in the office and he indicated one with his hand. “Sit doon, madam!” he said in a harsh voice. “The boy can stand!” And he glanced sternly at his brother’s son.

Donald stood up with his hat in his hand and stared at his uncle with feelings of resentment and dislike bubbling within him. It was difficult for him to believe that this hard-faced ship-broker and his laughing, rollicking, blue-eyed daddy were of the same blood and born of the same mother.

McKenzie spoke and his voice burred with Scottish accent and grated like a saw on iron. “What d’ye want me to do for ye, madam? Ye’ve come to me wanting something, or I’ve missed my guess!”

Donald could notice a look as of pain cross his mother’s face as she nervously twisted her black-gloved fingers. She looked old that morning. “I’ve come to see if you can do anything to help Donald—my boy here,” she said, a trifle nervously.

“In what way?” rasped the ship-broker.

“Well, sir,” continued Mrs. McKenzie, “he has a natural talent for drawing, and it was Alec’s wish that Donald become an architect, and it was our intention to put him through College, but, as you know, my husband went”—here she faltered—“and—and—I—I was unable to give him the schooling necessary. I—I thought, that, maybe for Alec’s sake, you would help Donald in some way and put him through school for an architectural training.”

David McKenzie listened unemotionally. “Humph!” he grunted, then with his searching eyes on Janet, he enquired in the manner of a prosecutor:

“Did you save no money from my brother’s salary? I understand he was gettin’ big money from Sutton’s—four hundred pounds a year as master—for a considerable time before he was drowned.”

Mrs. McKenzie winced. “I saved nothing,” she murmured.

“So!” The prosecutor’s voice grated on. “Ye were penniless when Alec went? Aye! Ye spent what he earned like watter. Ye lived in a villa and in a style fitted for people with an income twice what Alec was gettin’. I ken all aboot it, for I made enquiries. And noo ye’re keepin’ a lodgin’-hoose and comin’ tae me tae help pit yer son through tae become an architect.” He paused and leaned further back in his chair. “Why should I be asked to do this?”

“Why?” Mrs. McKenzie repeated the word dazedly. “Why? Well, I thought as you were Alec’s brother you’d be glad to do something for his son!”

“So!” Donald stood inwardly furious at the manner in which this dead-souled man was tongue-lashing his mother. “So! The lesson ye have learned—or ought to have learned—hasny driven the high-falutin’ notions oot yer head! Ye think because the lad can draw a bit that he should be an architect. It’s a wonder tae me ye didny want him tae be an artist and ask me tae send him tae Paris!” McKenzie’s eyebrows elevated sarcastically and he continued. “Madam! Your coming to me for such a thing is jist as big a piece o’ presumption as if the mother of yin of those pavement-artists came tae me on the same mission! Neither you nor yer son have any more claim upon my charity than they would have! If he could write poetry, ye’d want me to help him be a poet, I s’pose? Now, look here, madam!” He tapped the table with a pencil. “You’re in no position to have such notions! It was your high-and-mighty ideas that placed ye in the way ye are to-day! If your boy is clever at drawing, pit him tae work with a hoose painter or a sign painter. Let him get tae work. He’s auld enough!” Then almost fiercely to Donald. “How old are ye, boy?”

“Fifteen last October, sir!” answered the boy calmly.

“Old enough tae go to sea!” growled David McKenzie. “Would ye go to sea, boy, after what happened to yer father?”

“I would,” answered Donald wonderingly, “if I knew that mother was provided for.”

Mrs. McKenzie interposed. “I wouldn’t allow him to go to sea!”

The other took no notice, but reached for a pad of paper. “Give me yer address,” he grated. “I’ll see what I can do for ye, but, I’ll say this, that I’ll not be makin’ an architect oot of that boy there. You may go!”

He neither rose from his seat or made any offer to shake hands. Mrs. McKenzie hesitated for a moment at the door of the room, but David was absorbed in some letters and did not look up. “Thank you! Good day!” she said dully, and Donald echoed, “Good day, sir!” He took no notice, but when they left, he jumped up and locked his office door and sat for a long time staring out of the grimy window—oblivious to respectful taps on the closed panels. From a scrutiny of the grey sky, he turned and stared fixedly at a small photograph on his desk—a picture of a young boy—and the stern look faded from his face. It was his own son. For a minute he gazed on the picture with eyes in which a strange light of almost idolatrous affection glowed, then he turned and picked up Mrs. McKenzie’s card and the bitter, sneering expression returned as he murmured, “Aye! I’ll look after her brat!”

The McKenzies were out on the street again when Donald clasped his mother’s hand. “The old beast!” he said. “How I hate him!” The mother made no answer. She had only been with David for five or ten minutes, but in that time he had wounded her to the soul and she felt that all that he said was true.

They went home and tried to forget the memory of that hateful interview, but a week later came a letter from David McKenzie.

“Dear Madam:”—it ran—“I have considered your case carefully. I will give your boy the benefit of a free apprenticeship on a new vessel which will be ready for sea in a month or two. For yourself, I am enclosing a letter to the manager of the Ross Bay Hydropathic, Ross Bay, Ayrshire, and if you will present this to him on May 1st, he will give you a position there as assistant matron. Yours truly, David McKenzie.” There was a postscript which ran:—“I will advise you when your boy should report here at my office. I will provide him with the outfit necessary. D. McK.”

Janet read the curt offer and for a moment she stared into space. “Donald to go to sea! The sea that had torn her husband—his father—ruthlessly from her! And poor Joak’s father too! The sea that yearly made widows of so many Glasgow wives....” She remembered her dead husband’s words, “The sea would kill you, laddie ... and it’s a dog’s life at the best of times!” She threw the letter down on the table. No! she wouldn’t accept David’s offer. It was the cruelest blow he had yet dealt her. She would manage somehow, but she’d keep Donald by her.

“What does he say, mamma?” Donald picked up the letter and read it. The mother stared at him as he read and she noticed the look in his eyes with an unknown fear gripping her heart. Ere he had laid the missive down she knew what was in his mind.

“Mother, dear,” he said, slipping his arm around her neck, “I want to go!”

For a moment she remained silent and her mind ran back to a day two years ago. McLeish, mate of the Sarmania was talking. “It was a terrifyin’ sea, that yin, madam ... and when I pickit masel’ up ... I found tha whole bridge and wheelhouse gone ... and worst of all, madam, yer husband was gone! Aye, him an’ th’ second mate, an’ th’ quarter-master, the bos’n an’ fower men ... an’ fower sae badly mashed up that I doot if they’ll leeve! And that’s all there is tae tell, madam!” She shuddered at the horrible memory of it. The frightful wall of grey-green sea rising up, curling and roaring. The terrible crash as it engulfed the ship, and the bare wet decks, twisted iron work and debris which remained. The others—the human victims—were carried away in the maw of the monster—whipped from life into death with a suddenness which was staggering. “No! no! no!” she cried, clasping her son to her in a frenzy of fear. “You shan’t go! He shan’t send you!” But in spite of her objections, she knew that the irresistible lure of the sea would take her son from her and that the ties of love and home were powerless against the magic of its adventure and romance.