To have seen Kep now, and heard his ringing laughter, as Jack spun his droll service yarns, you could scarce have believed that he had any sorrow at all at his heart. He did have though, and it is not easy to forget so happy a home as that which he had just forsaken, only care lies lightly on the shoulders of a lad of fourteen. He compounded with his conscience, moreover, by promising to write nice letters home the very next morning.
He bade his friends good-night at last, and was shown up to his little room, a bit rough, perhaps, but everything as sweet and clean as new silver.
Never a dream, and it was far into the morning before the sun shimmering in through the window awoke him, and soon he was down to breakfast. There came word now that the _Breezy_ was off, and so she was. Jack and Kep started for the Hoe to see her sail past.
And Kep sighed. How he would have liked to be on board that low long craft. Not perhaps so poetic-looking was she as a ship under sail with every inch of canvas set to woo the wind, but her build and shape, and clean cut bows suggested terrific force, terrible possibilities.
The variegated flutter of her signal flags as she flew through the blue water, her great white ensign floating astern, and the sweet music of her band playing, "Good-bye, sweetheart, good-bye," everything about her in fact, thrilled poor Kep till the tears filled his eyes.
They watched her getting smaller and smaller as she went stretching seawards. Yes, and many more than they were watching her, for when our sailors leave their native bonnie British shores, they leave many a tearful face and many a breaking heart behind them.
There was more of sadness in Kep's breast as he walked back to the _Blue Ensign_ than he had ever felt since the day his mother died.
He would work some of that off, however, by writing to his sister, and his father, to say nothing of the good old priest and Duncan Rae. He had much to write about to Madge, and, indeed, he felt somehow as if years had elapsed since he had sat beside her on the green cliff-top.
The landlady of the inn vouchsafed to Kep some very good advice. He must, she said, go back to his parents--Kep had not told her his story--there was nothing else for it.