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The Child Crusoes
(Vitagraph)
3v LEONA RADNOR
"T^aper, sir?" Y There was a peculiar, wistful quality in the clear young voice, and the pleading eyes raised to the man's expressed more than the mercenary desire for the price of a paper. But the man was a very busy one at the moment. His three-masted bark, The Dauntless, lying alongside the wharf, was to sail that afternoon, and there was much cargo still to be stowed away. The stevedores seemed to dally with their loads, and the captain's harsh voice was incessantly raised in uncomplimentary remarks that had the effect of imparting speed to lagging feet. For the boy with the pleading eyes he had but a savage glance and dismissal.
' ' Get out of here ! What are you hanging around here for, anyway? Go off and sell your papers somewhere else, or you '11 get hurt ! Now, beat it ! "
Involuntarily the boy shrank from the captain's anger and started to obey him. But, beating in his heart and brain was a wild desire, an insistent call, that he knew he must answer some day. It was the call of the deep — the mysterious voice that sang of adventure and romance, of skimming thru space with the waves beneath and the sky above, of strange, far-off lands and peoples and of treasures to be found on desert islands.
Selling papers was ostensibly Jack's vocation, and his stepfather evidently intended that it should occupy the fullest complement of his waking hours, until something more remunerative could be found for the boy to labor at. Jack did not complain. When his mother died and lie was taken from school and sent out on the street with a bundle of papers under his arm, he comprehended that he must make good. And he had done it, and turned in his earnings to his stepfather. But he dreamed vaguely
of a life on the bounding billows — a life of endless adventure, in which he would play the hero's part.
It was not until after his mother's death, when he realized his loneliness and his inconsequence, except as a money-maker, that the dream became suggestive of consummation. He had felt for some time that he was ready to break away from his paper-selling existence, and, on this particular day, as he watched the loading of The Dauntless, he had a premonition that the moment had arrived.
It was this conviction that gave him the courage again to approach the irate captain and to blurt out :
"Captain, I want to go to sea. Wont you take me ? I '11 work hard — honest, I will!"
The captain glared at him.
"You? You puny little lubber! There's only one kind of shrimp comes aboard by boat, and that kind is good to eat. I told you to beat it, and I meant it ! Hey, Tom ! Chase this kid off ! Why dont you keep this dock clear of the rats, anyhow?"
The watchman hustled Jack up the pier, and, with advice of the same tenor as the captain's, ejected him into the street.
"Gee!" said the boy, "I guess that hunch was wrong ! ' '
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JACK SELLING PAPERS
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