Will you come on board ?" "Sure, if yer'll drop a Jacob's ladder," bellowed the captain at the invisible speaker.
"In a minute." The conversation had been carried on without either of the parties to it being able to see one another, but the captain of the vessel--for he had been the boy's interlocutor--now came off the bridge and with some of the crew watched two sailors lower a Jacob's ladder and make it fast to the rail.
"Now we go aboard," said Captain Hudgins, clambering up the swaying contrivance as nimbly as an athlete, "make our painter fast ter the ladder, Rob." This being done, the boys followed the veteran on board.

The steamer, when they gained her deck, puzzled them a good deal and it was not till her captain, a genial blond-bearded Britisher, explained to them that she was a cattle ship that they understood the utility of the wooden structures with which her decks were obstructed.
The captain explained that these were pens for the cattle she expected to take back to England, from which country she was returning after having taken over a large consignment of steers.
"Which," went on the captain, "brings us to my passengers.

They are Mr.Frank Harkness and his son, of Lariat, a small cattle town in the West, where Mr.Harkness has a large ranch.

They were his cattle that we took over and as he had difficulty in engaging a berth on a liner at this time of year, when the passenger ships are crowded, he decided to return with us.

Here is Mr.Harkness now," he added, as a tall, bronzed man, with a long coat draped over a pair of broad shoulders, and a wide-brimmed sombrero above keen eyes, approached.
"Visitors from the shore, captain ?" he inquired, a pleasant smile illuminating his clean-shaven, sun-browned face.
"That's what they are," rejoined the captain, "just dropped in on us, don't you know." "You mean we dropped in on them," amended the other with a laugh, "come here, Harry," he called, raising his voice, "we've got some company out of the fog." In response to his call a lad about the age of Rob appeared from the after-end of the ship, where the cabins were, and greeted the boys with a smile and a nod.