The sense of the miracle which had happened off the Island of San Pedro abided with him through gale and typhoon, through sunshine and darkness, through winter and summer. It didn't matter what the sea was doing, or the wind was saying, or the Old Man was threatening, a miracle had happened to Henry Harper. He had touched bed rock. He had seen things and he had learned things; man and nature, all the terrible and mysterious forces around him could do their worst, but he no longer feared them in the old craven way. Sailor had suffered a sea change. The things in earth and heaven he had looked upon none could share with him, not even Mr. Thompson, that strange and sinister man of the sea, to whom he owed what was called "his life"; nay, not even the Old Man himself who had lived six weeks on shellfish on the Island of San Pedro.
When the _Margaret Carey_ had been to Australia and round the larger half of the world, she put in at Frisco again. Here she took another cargo and signed on fresh hands for a voyage round the Pacific Coast. Among the latter was a man called Klondyke. At least, that was the name he went by aboard the _Margaret Carey_, and was never called by any other. At first this individual puzzled Henry Harper considerably. He shared a berth with him in the half-deck, and the boy--now a grown man rising sixteen--armed with a curiosity that was perfectly insatiable, and a faculty of taking lively and particular notice, found a great deal to interest him in this new chum.
He was about twenty-four and a Britisher, although Sailor in common with most of his shipmates thought at first that he was a Yankee. For one thing, he was a new type aboard the _Margaret Carey_. Very obviously he knew little of the sea, but that didn't seem to trouble him. From the moment he set foot aboard, he showed that he could take good care of himself. It was not obtrusive but quietly efficient care that he took of himself, yet it seemed to bear upon the attitude of all with whom he had to do.
Klondyke knew nothing about a windjammer, but soon started in to learn. And it didn't seem to matter what ticklish or unpleasant jobs he was put to--jobs for which Sailor could never overcome a great dislike--he had always a remarkable air of being in this hard and perilous business merely for the good of his health.