A Millionaire at Sixteen by Oliver Optic

Louis Belgrave watched the boat, which was an elegant affair, as it approached the shore. When it had accomplished half the distance, the officer in the stern sheets took off his cap, and waved it vigorously in the air. Then the abandoned millionaire recognized the stalwart form of Captain Ringgold, and he returned the salute as earnestly as the other made it.

When he saw where the boat intended to land, Louis rushed to the shore and awaited its arrival. The men pulled with the precision of men-of-wars-men. At a short distance from the land up went the eight oars like a piece of clock-work. The bowman took his place in the fore-sheets with a boat-hook in his hand, and fended off as the keel ploughed into the soft sand. The boat looked like a fairy barge. The stern sheets were upholstered with crimson velvet; and the owner of the Guardian-Mother had never seen anything so luxurious, even in the cutters of the Blanche.

Captain Ringgold rose from his seat as soon as the keel touched the sand, and made his way to the bow, from which he leaped to the shore like a boy. Louis was there to receive him; and if there were tears in his eyes, they were tears of gladness, though perhaps his empty stomach was to some extent responsible for them. The captain rushed upon him with both hands extended, which Louis grasped with an energy which his feelings did not belie.

"I am exceedingly glad to see you, Mr. Belgrave! " exclaimed the captain, wringing the hands of the hungry millionaire.

"And I am heartily rejoiced to see you, Captain Ringgold," replied Louis, wiping the tears from his eyes, though he could not for the life of him have told for what he was weeping.

"But what is the matter with you, my dear boy? you are actually crying. Have you any bad news from your mother? " asked the captain, who was now the commander of the Guardian-Mother, though he had never been formally invested with that office.

"I have heard nothing at all from her, sir," answered Louis in a choking voice.

"What is the matter, then?"

"Which the poor young gentleman is 'alf starved, sir, if you please," interposed Baldy.

"Not quite so bad as that, captain," added Louis, trying to laugh. "I confess that I am hungry, and that I feel quite faint."

"Poor fellow! I don't understand it! But no talk till you feel better, my dear boy," said Captain Ringgold, full of sympathy. "Only one question, and then not another word. Where is the Maud?"

"She sailed from this place day before yesterday at noon, and headed to the south-east as soon as she got out into deep water," replied Louis. "She is forty-eight hours on her way to Bermuda."

"That's all now! " exclaimed the commander decidedly.

"I am able to talk, captain; I don't need any nursing. I have not lived very well since we left the Blanche; and I have eaten next to nothing to-day, for the ham was not good, and the hardbread was dirty and smoky."

"Have you anything to go on board of the steamer, Louis?"

"Nothing but my valise and overcoat."

Captain Ringgold ordered a couple of men in the boat to assist Louis to his place in the stern sheets, and a couple more to put his baggage on board. While they were doing so, he walked over to the inlet, followed by Baldy.

"If you please, captain, will you 'ave the kindness to take me on board of the Guardian-Mother? for the young gentleman as owns her -- Mr. Belgrave -- told me as 'ow I should go with him," said Baldy, who perhaps thought the commander had a veto on the promises of the juvenile owner.

"If Mr. Belgrave said you were to go on board, that is enough, in spite of any other person," replied the captain, laughing at the simplicity of the cook. "I should not be likely in any case to leave you, or any other human being, in such a desolate place as this sandbank. I don't understand this business at all. What is that wreck on the shore of the passage through?"

"That is the wreck of the Phantom, which she was burned the day we got 'ere by a hagent of Captain Scoble," replied Baldy.