Page:A Sailor Boy with Dewey.djvu/251

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
A FIGHT AT LONG RANGE.
233

range, then dropped our weapons and sought shelter from the fierce rays of the setting sun. During the excitement I had forgotten about Watt Brown's packet, but now I brought it forth and handed it to him, and in as gentle a way as I could, told him of his parent's death.

"Poor father!" he murmured, and tears stood on his rough cheeks. "He was a good man, even if he was queer. I wish I could have been with him when he died."

He then proceeded to tell us something of his parent's history, how he had been first a sailor, then a doctor, and then a rover of the earth in search of adventure.

"He has been to nearly every country on the globe," he continued. "He was always wanting to see the unknown and the strange. He did not travel so much when my mother was living, but after she died he could not content himself in one place for more than six months or a year at the most. He came to Manila with me on my last trip and intended to look for a Kanaka whom he had once met in the Hawaiian Islands."

"He said the document was of great value," I answered. "I hope it proves so."

"I'll look it over the first chance I get. Now is no time to think of anything like that, since those heathens are coming our way a second time," concluded Watt Brown.