Besides, he was used to being wet half the time, as he and other lads of his acquaintance frequently dived off the stringpiece and swam around in the lake. So when the owner of the rescued rowboat looked for the boy he could not see him. But he determined to make up for his unintentional rudeness, and so went after Nat.
He found the boy with a number of others crowded about the entrance to the freight office.
"May I speak to you a few moments?" asked the young man.
"Guess you'll have to excuse me," replied Nat. "I'm busy."
"What doing?"
"I'm waiting for a job. I may get one helping carry out some light freight, and I need the money."
"How much will you get?"
"Oh, if I'm lucky I may make a dollar."
"I'll give you more than that for saving my boat. I want to explain that I didn't understand what you had done when I spoke so quickly."
"Oh, that's all right," said Nat good-naturedly. "But if you're going to give me a dollar I guess I can afford to quit here," and he stepped out of the line, the gap immediately closing up, for there were many in search of odd jobs to do about the dock whenever a steamer came in.
"Here are five dollars," went on the young man, producing a bank bill.
"Five dollars!" exclaimed Nat. "Say, mister, it ain't worth all that – saving the boat."
"Yes, it is. That craft cost my father quite a sum, and he would have blamed me if she had been smashed. I'm much obliged to you. I'm sorry I thought you were stealing her, but it looked – "
"Forget it," advised Nat with a smile. "It's all right. I'll save boats for you regularly at this price."
"Do you work around the docks – er – "
"My name's Nat Morton," said the lad.
"And mine is John Scanlon," added the other, and he explained how he had come to leave his boat at the float. "I don't know that I will have any more boats to save, as my father's yacht will soon be leaving for Lake Superior. Wouldn't you like a place on her better than your regular job?"
"My regular job? I haven't any. I do whatever I can get to do, and sometimes it's little enough."
"Where do you live?"
"Back there," replied Nat with a wave of his hand toward the tenement district of Chicago.
"What does your father do?"
"I haven't any. He's – he's dead." And Nat's voice broke a little, for his loss had been a comparatively recent one.
"I'm sorry – I beg your pardon – I didn't know – "
"Oh, that's all right," said Nat, bravely keeping his feelings under control. "Dad's been dead a little over two years now. He and I lived pretty good – before that. My mother died when I was a baby. Dad was employed on a lumber barge. He had a good job, and I didn't have to work when he was alive. But after he was lost overboard in a storm one night, that ended all my good times. I've been hustling for myself ever since."
"Didn't he have any life insurance, or anything like that?"
"Not that I know of. I remember he said just before he went on – on his last trip – he told me if it turned out all right he'd have a nice sum in the bank, but I never heard anything about it. They found his body, but there was no money in the clothes, nor any bank books."
"That's too bad. How do you get along?"
"Oh, I make out pretty well. I live with a Mr. William Miller and his wife. They're poor, but they're good to me. He's a 'longshoreman, and he works around the docks. I do, too, whenever there is any work to be had, and I manage to make a living, though it isn't very much of a one."
"No, I presume not. Perhaps if I speak to my father he might give you a position on his boat."
"I'm much obliged to you," replied Nat. "I like boats and the water. I'd like to be a pilot."
"I'm afraid dad couldn't give you that job," answered young Mr. Scanlon. "We have a good pilot."
"And I don't want to leave the Millers," added the boy. "They've been good to me, and I want to pay them back. But isn't that some one calling you?"
He pointed to a figure down on the float, where the boat was tied.
"Yes. That's the mate of my father's steam yacht. Probably father sent him for me. Well, I'll have to say good-by. I hope I'll see you again."
"I hope so, too, especially if you have any more boats you want saved. I'm afraid five dollars is too much."
"Not a bit. Take it and welcome."
"It's more than I could earn in a week," went on Nat as he carefully folded the bill and placed it in his pocket. "All the same, I think I'll try for a job here now. It looks as if they needed lots of hands, because the boat is late."
Bidding John Scanlon good-by Nat turned back to the freight office, in front of which there was now only a small throng looking for employment.
CHAPTER II
A CRY FOR HELP
Owing to the time he had spent talking to the young man whose boat he saved, Nat lost a chance of getting work in helping to unload the steamer. Still he did help to carry some freight to the waiting trucks and drays, and for this he received fifty cents. But as he had five dollars, he did not mind the small sum paid him by the freight agent.
"You weren't around as early as usual," remarked that official as he observed Nat. "You usually make more than this."
"I know it, but I had a job that paid me better," and our hero told about the boat incident.
"Another steamer'll be in day after to-morrow," went on the agent. "Better be around early."
"I will, thanks."
Then, as there was no further opportunity for work on the pier that day, Nat started for the place he called home. It was in a poor tenement, in one of the most congested districts of Chicago.
But if there were dirt and squalor all about, Mrs. Miller did her best to keep her apartment clean. So though the way up to it was by rather dirty stairs, the rooms were neat and comfortable.
"Well, Nat, you're home early, aren't you?" asked the woman, who, with her husband, had befriended the orphan lad.
"Yes, Mrs. Miller."
"I suppose you couldn't get any work?"
"Oh, yes, I got some."
"What's the matter, then? Don't you feel well?"
She could not understand any one coming away so early from a place where there was work, for work, to the poor, means life itself.
"Oh, I did so well I thought I'd take a vacation," and Nat related the incident of the day.
The boy's liking for the water seemed to have been born in him. Soon after his mother had died his father placed him in the care of a family in an inland city. The child seemed to pine away, and an old woman suggested he might want to be near the water, as his father had followed all his life a calling that kept him aboard boats. Though he did not believe much in that theory, Mr. Morton finally consented to place his son to board in Chicago. Nat at once picked up and became a strong, healthy lad.
As he grew older his father took him on short trips with him, so Nat grew to know and love the Great Lakes, as a sailor learns to know and love the ocean.
Soon Nat began asking questions about ships and how they were sailed. His father was a good instructor, and between his terms at school Nat learned much about navigation in an amateur sort of way.
Best of all he loved to stand in the pilot-house, where he was admitted because many navigators knew and liked Mr. Morton. There the boy learned something of the mysteries of steering a boat by the compass and by the lights on shore. He learned navigating terms, and, on one or two occasions, was even allowed to take the spokes of the